Recent publications
Recent publications
Article Type: Recent publications From: Structural Survey, Volume 30, Issue 5.
Assessing Building Services
This is a new publication on assessing building services written by Phil Parnham. Services account for a major proportion of the cost of a modern building. If defective they can cause considerable inconvenience to occupants,require costly repairs and in some cases pose a serious threat to health and safety. The book takes a clear, logical approach to each of the services. Untangling the technical details and presenting an easy-to-follow assessment protocol, this book offers expert advice on visual identification, assessment and basic testing. The book is published by RICS Books (ISBN: 9781842197264) in paperback and priced at £49.95.
English Ironwork of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
First published in 1911, this book is an accumulation of years of practical work by the author, J. Starkie Gardner. The book provides the most comprehensive and outstanding record of decorative ironwork in Britain and also discusses stylistic trends and attitudes towards ironwork. It concentrates on exterior work which is of course the most susceptible to deterioration. With a new preface by Chris Topp and an introduction by Bethan Griffiths and Peter Millington, the work has been re-published by Donhead. It is available in hardback (ISBN 978 1 873394 96 0) and priced at £60.00.
RICS Building Surveying Guidance
Recent RICS Practice Standards for building surveyors include Surveying Safely (1st Edition) which considers health and safety responsibilities at both a corporate level (whether the organisation is large or small), and at the level of the individual property professional; Reinstatement Cost Assessments of Buildings (2nd Edition) intended as a guide for surveyors who carry out reinstatement cost assessment of buildings; and Flat Roof Coverings (3rd Edition) which provides information on the diagnosis, remedy and prevention of failures in a variety of existing flat roof weathering materials, both continuously supported roof coverings and rigid sheets. All of these standards are priced at £30.00 or are available to download free by ISurv subscribers.
RICS Dilapidations Guidance Note (6th Edition)
This new 6th Edition aims to provide practical guidance to RICS members when instructed in connection with dilapidations matters. This is particularly relevant to practitioners in view of the recent adoption of a formal pre-action protocol under the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR).
The aim of the guidance note is for surveyors to upgrade their specialist skills and ensure that they follow the correct approach and best practice when advising clients. The guidance note is priced at £40.00 (or available to download free by ISurv subscribers).
200 Contractual Problems and Their Solutions
This new edition written by Roger Knowles examines 200 contractual problems which regularly arise on building and engineering projects. It provides a detailed explanation of their solutions, citing standard contract conditions and key parts of legal judgements as authority. This book deals with a broad range of construction contracts including JCT Standard Form and Design and Build, New Engineering Contract NEC3, ICE and GC/Works/1. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell at £69.00.
BCIS Pricing Guidance
Recent guides on pricing published by BCIS include Painting and Decorating (£39.99), Small Works (£59.99) and online data sets for Day-works, Civil Engineering Works and Building Maintenance.
Understanding JCT Standard Building Contracts
Understanding JCT Standard Building Contracts (9th Edition) by David Chappell is now available from Routledge Building & Construction. This best selling guide has been revised to take into account changes made in 2011 to payment provisions, and elsewhere. This remains the most concise guide available to the most commonly used JCT building contracts: Standard Building Contract with quantities, 2011 (SBC11), Intermediate Building Contract 2011 (IC11),Intermediate Building Contract with contractor's design 2011 (ICD11), Minor Works Building Contract 2011 (MW11), Minor Works Building Contract with contractor's design 2011 (MWD11) and Design and Build Contract 2011 (DB11). Chappell avoids legal jargon but writes with authority and precision. Architects, quantity surveyors, contractors and students of these professions will find this a practical and affordable reference tool arranged by topic. Published in paperback (ISBN 978-0-415-50890-2) it is priced at £24.99.
Green Building with Concrete: Sustainable Design and Construction
Editored by Gajanan M. Sabnis a Consultant from Silver Spring, Maryland, USA this book provides a full overview of LEED building and design standards, which are being adopted in several countries, highlights research on economic analysis to demonstrate the economic benefits of concrete for green building, examines various life-cycle assessment methodologies, including BEES and ATHENA and presents illustrative case studies, including a chapter on Masdar City as an example of sustainable development. It is published CRC Press (ISBN 9781439812969) in hardback (336 pages) and is priced at £82.00.
ISurv Building Surveying Updates
Recent updates include residential building repair – to reflect changes to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act, residential property surveys – providing an outline in relation to core building surveying competencies and relevant case law, contaminated land – updated to cover the latest amendments to the Environmental Protection Act, legal questions –covering dilapidations, EPC and forfeiture, and home inspections case notes – an updated series of features highlighting building defects. ISurv is available through RICS (telephone +44 (0) 24 7686 8433).
Whole Life Costing a New Approach
Written by Peter Caplehorn and published by Routledge (152 pages) in paperback (978-0-415-43423-2) or hardback (978-0-415-43422-5). Whole life costing has been a subject waiting to come of age for many years. What was previously of mainly academic interest is now becoming a key business tool in the procurement and construction of significant projects. With the advent of PPP and in particular of PFI, details of the project life need to be assessed and tied in to funding and operation plans. Many of these projects run to millions of pounds and are of high political or social importance, so the implications of the life of materials are crucial. A fundamental requirement of these procurement routes has been that the whole enterprise should be included within the bid, so that a company takes on not only the construction but also the running and maintenance of any building. Additionally as sustainability has emerged and grown in importance, so has the need for a whole lifetime costing approach, partly driven by governmental insistence. At the heart of sustainability is an understanding of what the specification means for the future of the building and how it will affect the environment. Whole life costing considers part of this and provides an understanding of how materials may perform and what allowances are needed at the end of their life. This book sets out the practical issues involved in the selection of materials, their performance and the issues that need to be taken into account. The emphasis,unlike other publications, is not to formularise or to package the issues but to leave the reader with a clear understanding and a sensible practical way of arriving at conclusions in the future.
Ninety Years of Housing, 1921–2011
Published by IHS BRE Press (48 pages) this report considers housing trends relating to living standards, energy use and carbon emissions. The report is written by Janet Utley and Les Shorrock and is available in paperback(978-1-84806-265-8) for £27.50. The housing stock in the UK has changed significantly since 1921. Many homes have been constructed since then, leading to the very wide diversity that we see today. This report looks back over the past 90 years, presenting statistics that illustrate key changes and the progress that has been made in improving the nation's homes. The focus is on changes to the housing stock that have had an effect on standards of living,energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Impacts on health are also discussed. The report closes by considering what the housing stock will need to look like in 2050 in order to meet the UK Government's target to cut CO2emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels, and the scale of the challenge that this presents. What has been achieved in the past is very substantial, but also provides an important reality check on the feasibility of achieving such large-scale changes over the next 40 years.
