Causes of Quality Failures in Building Energy Renovation Projects of Northern China: A Review and Empirical Study

Abstract

Building energy renovations can effectively improve the environmental performance and energy sustainability of existing buildings. From 2007 onwards, the Chinese government has promoted energy-saving renovations of existing urban residential buildings. Nevertheless, various quality failures happen during the construction period in energy-saving renovation projects of residential buildings. Yet, the causes and their characters remain largely unknown. Through a literature review, this paper investigates the causes of quality failures. Validated through experts’ interviews, a total of 18 causes were identified in building energy renovation projects. These causes were analyzed from two main aspects: the importance of a cause (related to impact and frequency), and the level of effort required to address a cause (related to origin and scale), using both a questionnaire survey and a focus group. The results indicate that the critical causes of quality failures are working under high-cost and high-time pressure, adverse natural conditions, fraud of construction companies, incomplete construction site survey, poor checking procedures of supervisors, poor operational skilled workers, inadequate equipment performance, lack of experienced project managers, and incomplete building information in projects. The causes were classified as external and internal causes of building energy renovation projects. The outcome of this paper should aid policy makers and project coordinators to focus on critical causes of quality failures, and to develop effective actions and policy interventions to achieve successful renovation projects with high-quality performance.

Machine Learning for the Improvement of Deep Renovation Building Projects Using As-Built BIM Models

“…In the case of energy renovation, three main constructive elements of the building are considered: Openings (doors and windows), roofs, and external walls. The work in [39,40] includes technical specifications linked to each of these elements: Actions related to the replacement of doors and windows consist in guaranteeing some values for the heat-transfer coefficient and the air ventilation rate; in the case of thermal insulation of roofs, control on the kind of material, bulk density, heat-transfer coefficient, thermal conductivity of the insulation, tensile/compressive strength and dimensional stability; finally, for the thermal insulation of exterior walls, similar actions to those of roof insulation are required, by checking the kind of material, bulk density, heat-transfer coefficient, thermal conductivity of the insulation, tensile/compressive strength and dimensional stability.…”

Unravelling Causes of Quality Failures in Building Energy Renovation Projects of Northern China: Quality Management Perspective

“…(Modified from Rezaee et al 2019. ) procedures (Qi et al 2020). Thus, the 13 internal causes for analyzing the management of energy renovation projects are discussed in this section.…”

“…In 2010, China became the world's largest energy consumer, accounting for 19% of global energy consumption (Zhao et al 2014). Moreover, the proportion of building energy use in total energy consumption is increasing (Qi et al 2020). In China especially, the existing building stock is responsible for approximately one-third of the country's total energy consumption (Hong et al 2016).…”

Performance Gap and Occupant Behavior in Building Retrofit: Focus on Dynamics of Change and Continuity in the Practice of Indoor Heating

“…In the design stage, the main sources of uncertainties are the lack of appropriate assumptions (e.g., weather, construction thermal properties), the approximations present in every modelling method or tool, insufficient calibration of the created model [20] and the design concept (e.g., overestimation of systems' actual performance). Within the construction phase, a lack of correspondence between the design specification and the onsite construction quality may occur (due to, e.g., improper construction techniques, technical faults during installation, change orders, poor building quality) [21]. The operation stage is widely considered as a major contributor to building energy performance gap due to occupant behavior and a number of potential technical issues [19,22].…”