Buildings and construction

Will 3-D-printed buildings alleviate the construction labour shortage?

Inez Caron January 13, 2023

Workers wield tablets and smart phones rather than tools on the construction site of a 3D-printed building, in Leamington, Ont. Eventually just two people will run the printer.nidus3D/Handout

This fall, the construction site of a pair of large warehouses near Kingston will look vastly different than a regular building site.

Instead of the typical dozen or so workers on site wielding tools to erect the structures, there will be just a few people – working mobile devices that control software to operate an immense 3-D-printing machine.

The printer’s human-sized nozzle methodically extrudes layer after layer of concrete to create walls. In just one pass, the printer can produce the equivalent of cladding, sheathing, thermal breaks and formwork for structure and interior finish, leaving perfect cut-outs for windows and doors (which, along with floors and roof, aren’t part of the printing process – yet).

If all goes according to plan, these warehouses will become Canada’s first 3-D-printed buildings permitted for commercial use.

Last August, the developers, Kingston-based nidus3D, printed the country’s first-ever multifamily apartment building, a fourplex in Leamington, Ont. And in December, the company printed the first two-storey structure in North America, a house on Wolfe Island, also near Kingston.

Those two residential projects are relatively narrow because the printable area of nidus3D’s gantry-style 3-D concrete printer stretches just 40 feet. The upcoming warehouse development will inaugurate a nidus3D-pioneered system that uses site-printed wall sections that will be fitted together by crane – allowing the company to print buildings that are much larger than the printer.

The company says 3-D-printed structures can be built quickly – the ground floor of the Wolfe Island house went up in two weeks – using less materials and producing virtually zero waste, such as off-cuts, to deliver sustainable, highly insulated, airtight and energy-efficient buildings.

Kingston, Ont.-based nidus3D built Canada’s first 3D-printed four-plex, in Leamington, Ont., this summer for Habitat for Humanity with funding from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.nidus3D/Handout

For now, costs are equivalent to typical masonry structures, but it aims to become more affordable as it scales up, with more printers expected to be delivered to Toronto and Vancouver by next year.

“We do anticipate costs dropping dramatically,” says Ian Arthur, nidus3D’s president and founder, and until recently, Kingston’s NDP MPP. “We think that, within a couple of years, it will be the most affordable means of putting up a building.”

According to a 2018 study in the U.K. research publication IOP Science: Materials Science and Engineering, 3-D printing can cut costs by at least 35 per cent compared with current manual costs.

Mr. Arthur says his one-term political career spurred an entrepreneurial interest in solving housing affordability and some of the mounting issues challenging the construction industry.

“It’s a sector in nothing short of a crisis,” he says. “It’s facing pressures from so many different directions.”

In addition to material-cost and supply volatility, “we have a huge labour crisis across the country, and as the boomer generation retires, this labour pinch is only going to get worse.”

”We have a huge labour crisis across the country and as the boomer generation retires, this labour pinch is only going to get worse.

— Ian Arthur, president of nidus3D

Statistics Canada’s latest report records an all-time high job vacancy rate in the construction sector of 7.7 per cent, with employers seeking to fill 81,500 vacant positions.

Citing BuildForce, it says the industry needs to recruit 309,000 new construction workers over the next decade, driven predominantly by the expected retirement of 259,100 workers.

Meanwhile, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) estimates that to meet affordable housing requirements, the country needs to substantially increase the number of homes projected to be produced by 2030 – from 2.3 million units to 3.5 million. The biggest housing supply gap is in Ontario and B.C., where housing is least affordable, according to the CMHC.

Nidus3D plans to 3D print two-storey, multifamily homes in Toronto and Vancouver within the next year.nidus3D/Handout

Unless the industry “starts solving how to build in a different way” that requires fewer workers, Mr. Arthur says, it is unlikely to meet the country’s housing demands.

“We build homes with hundreds of materials, thousands of components and, honestly, millions of steps to get a building out of the ground,” he says. “3-D construction printing simplifies the process and automates it,” making it substantially less labour-intensive, Mr. Arthur says, adding that nidus3D’s construction printers will eventually be run by just two people.

Another company goal is to print with an eco-friendly concrete alternative, “such as wood fibre with a binding agent,” he says. “We have research partnerships with universities, so over the winter we’re looking to print a lot of samples.”

Even if nidus3D succeeds at lowering costs and emissions, the question remains whether Canadian lenders and investors will be quick to embrace 3-D-printed buildings.

“Quick is never a word that’s used in Canada when it comes to banks,” says Marlon Bray, senior director at Altus Group. “The Canadian environment is a lot more risk- averse, a lot more cautious, than other countries.”

The international real estate industry has slowly started to warm to 3-D-printed buildings, a product Mr. Bray describes as “extremely niche.” China, an early adopter, boasts the world’s tallest 3-D-printed structure, a five-storey apartment building, while a 6,900-square-foot municipal building in Dubai is the world’s largest, according to ArchDaily.

In the U.S., last year construction firm SQ4D sold what it claims was the country’s first 3-D-printed home, in Riverhead, N.Y., for US$299,000 ($403,000).

The interior or Canada’s first residentially permitted 3D house.nidus3D/handout

U.S. construction company Icon is at the forefront of the country’s 3-D printing and is currently printing a 100-home community in Texas designed by Bjarke Ingels Group. In December, the partners were awarded a US$57-million NASA contract to develop a livable, 3-D-printed lunar base on the moon’s surface.

Mr. Bray says advances in construction automation, such as 3-D printing and robotically manufactured modular structures, will be part of Canada’s future, but it might take “at least a decade” to reach critical mass.

“The entire capacity for robotics in construction right now is about 2 to 3 per cent of the whole North American market: A tiny, tiny bit,” Mr. Bray says. “And while I think it’s a huge part of the future, it’s a mid- to long-term time range.”

Prefabricated buildings are further along than 3-D-printed ones, he says, “but could even modular apartments ramp up in two or three years? No. The technology needs significant investment.”

And that usually takes many, many years, he says.

“If you look at the car, it took 13 years for it to replace the horse,” he points out.

How masking aged buildings in a ‘second skin’ could minimize heating expenditures, and emissions

Inez Caron December 7, 2022

London
CNN Business enterprise
—

With soaring power rates, household insulation is getting increasingly crucial. But outdated properties that are unsuccessful to hold in the heat are not only pricey for people — they are also high-priced for the weather.

In the European Union, the place buildings account for 40% of power consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions, new construction by itself won’t be plenty of to resolve the trouble. For that, previous residences have to have to be retrofitted to make them much more strength effective.

Ecoworks, a German startup, thinks it has the answer. The firm employs laser scanning technological know-how to develop a electronic twin of a building. It then provides prefabricated panels that suit precisely around the aged building, increasing its insulation.

“The world are not able to find the money for, financially but also from the CO2 spending budget, to tear down all the outdated houses and develop new kinds with cement and steel,” claims Emanuel Heisenberg, the company’s founder and CEO. “We will need to renovate … and renovate structures into carbon sinks.”

Shunning the carbon-intensive resources generally utilised in building, Ecoworks utilizes renewables this sort of as wooden for the paneling and cellulose for insulation. It installs electric warmth pumps within houses, which it claims are additional effective than fuel boilers, and fits a modular roof with created-in solar panels, supporting the properties generate far more energy than they take in.

The company’s to start with big renovation challenge, in 2019, was of a 1930s apartment block around Düsseldorf. The making was hugely inefficient, making use of 369 kilowatt-hours of power per sq. meter, way earlier mentioned the EU ordinary. Since the Ecoworks renovation, the residences create 20% more vitality than they take in, suggests Heisenberg.

Flats in close proximity to Düsseldorf before and soon after an Ecoworks renovation.

Heisenberg suggests the full “second skin” — which incorporates home windows, air flow, heating and hot drinking water pipes — can be mounted in just two to a few weeks. He adds that 80% of the on-web page labor that would usually be necessary is moved to the manufacturing facility, generating it less expensive than regular techniques, and a lot less disruptive. People only have to depart their houses for about two days with Ecoworks retrofits, as opposed to 6 to eight months with conventional renovation.

Regardless of the advantages of retrofitting, development has been slow. According to the European Commission, about 35% of Europe’s buildings are much more than 50 several years aged and almost 75% are strength inefficient. Only 1% is renovated each and every yr.

The Commission has launched much better polices on electrical power effectiveness to incentivize builders. Community and household properties considered the the very least effective are needed by regulation to be renovated prior to 2030.

Ecoworks' construction is mainly done in factories, which it says minimizes disruption on-site.

“Building strength efficiency is essential to attaining our decarbonization targets,” suggests Ian Hamilton, a professor of vitality at College Higher education London. Hamilton is creator of the UN 2022 world-wide status report for buildings and design, which located that the sector’s CO2 emissions hit a new superior in 2021.

“Not only will electrical power performance minimize the amount of money of renewable electricity necessary, but a lot more productive buildings can be reduced price, far more snug, healthier, and extra resilient to weather alter,” he claims.

Introducing creating power codes and monetary incentives will be important in rising expense in renovation, he provides.

In Germany, this is by now happening, according to Heisenberg. “Now they [building developers] are faced with regulation, they have to renovate,” he says. This calendar year the organization has retrofitted 320 apartments, and desire is mounting, he provides. Up coming 12 months Ecoworks will commence the organizing process for far more than double that range.

So much, the corporation has focused on Germany, but by 2024 Ecoworks wants to begin increasing into other sections of Europe, these types of as Austria and Switzerland, which have a similar stock of apartment blocks constructed amongst the 1950s and the 1980s.

Israel belatedly looks to green construction for concrete fix to polluting buildings

Inez Caron September 20, 2022

Israel’s commitment to reducing its net carbon emissions to zero by 2050 is changing the way homes and other buildings are being constructed, accelerating a shift away from how structures have gone up until now.

In March 2022, green building standards meant to reduce emissions during and after construction became mandatory for all building projects in Israel.

In July, the Energy Ministry and the Israel Green Building Council announced that eight local authorities had been selected for training in green building techniques.

They also announced that new housing would have to provide potential buyers with an energy efficiency rating, such as is already done with most large appliances.

The moves are typical of the carrot-and-stick approach that countries and cities are using around the world to push for greater sustainability in many areas, including construction.

Cities are major contributors to carbon pollution. They are responsible for upwards of 70% of global emissions, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the majority of that comes through building and operating structures, experts say. Greening that process will need to be a major priority for Israeli policymakers if the country is serious about reaching its 2050 goals, according to experts.

Construction work in Tel Aviv, August 2022 (Danielle Nagler)

“The greenest building is the one that already exists,” Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects, famously said.

He might have added that the next best thing is a building that works through every aspect of the construction process to reduce its carbon footprint, from its project management and waste products to using designs and materials that minimize the energy it will use through its lifetime.

To qualify as a green building, a structure needs to be assessed from a variety of vantage points and meet certain standards. Both construction and occupancy phases need to be designed to manage energy, water, and other materials efficiently while making use of technologies that minimize emissions and harm to the environment. Much of the burden falls on developers, though occupants often have a role as well, especially in lowering energy inputs.

The process usually goes well beyond cosmetic features, such as so-called green walls – vertical sheets of plants on the outside of buildings, though they do have some impact. Increasingly fashionable in big cities, green walls play a role in absorbing carbon dioxide and in helping to manage temperatures and improve air quality. But the level of impact remains under debate, while there is general agreement that less visible measures, such as increasing efficiency, make a more significant difference.

The plant-covered exterior of the Checkpoint building in Tel Aviv. (Yoav Peled/Vertical Field)

Nationwide, only 85 structures are LEED-certified by the US Green Building Council, considered the global standard for sustainable building. In Jerusalem, the country’s most populous city, only two have earned the rating (including the building housing The Times of Israel offices).

Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry has certified another 450 buildings as meeting sustainability standards. According to the ministry, as of 2020, another 1,000 buildings were in the certification process.

Ziv Shor, who heads the Israeli branch of international commercial real estate giant JLL, says the country is in a transitional phase when it comes to green building.

Ziv Shor, head of JLL in Israel (courtesy JLL)

In the past “developers did not understand why they should change,” said Shor. “Energy efficiency and minimal carbon footprint are now becoming the number one priority for people and for occupiers [of commercial buildings], and so in turn it becomes the priority for developers.”

Shor believes that the real estate management sector can lead the way by making sure the construction industry delivers buildings that businesses want.

He is seeing commercial occupants happy to pay a premium — up to 10% above regular commercial rents — for sustainable building. A green building can in turn deliver savings of 20% to 40% in building operating costs through its lifetime, with those numbers expected to rise as resources grow scarcer and technologies more efficient.

In the 1950s, Israel led the world in solar power production, largely because it needed to generate energy independent of the Arab world. The country’s shift to tech has produced a fair number of startups aiming to bring green solutions to various sectors.

Among the young Israeli companies with the potential to make the biggest impact is ECOncrete, which focuses on creating sustainable concrete for undersea or shoreline applications that are designed to support marine environments rather than harm them.

The company says it has already taken on 40 projects in 11 countries, adapting its product to each location’s unique biological makeup in order to support local marine fauna and flora.

Installation of ECOncrete articulated marine mattresses.

Concrete is the most polluting element of the construction process, accounting for some 8 percent of carbon emissions worldwide. Over 4 billion tons of cement, which is mixed with water and aggregates to create concrete, are produced each year.

But concrete — cheap, durable, and long-lasting — is also vastly important for the construction industry, providing housing for about 70 percent of the world’s population.

ECOncrete says its material can cut carbon output by up to 70% compared to traditional cement. The company’s admixture mostly replaces clinker — a gravelly substance that is a key ingredient in cement and the main source of emissions in concrete — with more sustainable and recycled materials such as slag cement or fly ash, though the manufacture of those materials is known to pollute as well.

On land, Criaterra claims to slash energy usage by 90% compared to traditional manufacturing by replacing kiln-fired cement and ceramics with what it says are 100% natural materials. The company is focusing on wall tiles for interiors, but also plans to branch out into masonry.

Criaterra ceramic innovation start-up (courtesy Criaterra)

Ramat Gan-based Green Vibe says it reduces concrete waste in the construction process by up to 50%. Rather than re-inventing concrete, Green Vibe does this by allowing builders to maximize efficiency, using sensors, advanced data analysis and other tools across the lifetime of major projects.

Urecsys, based at the Hebrew University, says it can reduce exposure to hazardous urban air pollutants within buildings by utilizing its unique modeling of air pollution via machine learning algorithms.

Urecsys claims to reduce the penetration of hazardous urban air pollution into office buildings by a huge percentage by analyzing pollutants in the air and making data-driven predictions, which are then fed into a building’s central ventilation system to allow only clean air in. The system is also touted as a substantial energy-saver, reducing a building’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Pre-fabricated construction has been touted as more sustainable than traditional building due to efficiency savings and other environment-friendly benefits over a structure’s lifetime. While Israel lags in modular construction, the country’s largest developer, Tidhar, is experimenting with building bathroom pods entirely off-site and then lifting them into position within apartments.

The company has installed 180 so far but is aiming for 1,000 units across its Israeli projects by the end of this year and at least a doubling of factory capacity in 2023.

For homeowners or renters looking to reduce their carbon footprint on their own, HomeBiogas has developed a build-it-yourself system that turns kitchen waste and livestock manure into clean cooking gas for up to three meals a day, plus an extra 10 liters of clean natural liquid fertilizer. The high-tech composting firm, which is already listed on the Tel Aviv stock exchange, boasts that it has already mitigated 58,506 tons of CO₂ through the use of its technology.

The key to successful sustainability is demand — which is already happening in the office market, with international tenants in particular demanding high environmental standards for the buildings they occupy, according to Shor at JLL.

Developers know what they need to deliver for these kinds of tenants and are already changing they way they do things to accommodate them.

Hotel guests, on the other hand, are less likely to demand concrete efficiency standards and the like, but some hotels are also using environmentally friendly construction, allowing visitors to reduce their carbon footprint even if away from home. Etic hotels, which lists environmentally friendly properties for short-term stays, identifies 136 sustainable hotels in Israel.

The view from a private villa at Six Senses Shaharut in the Negev Desert, on a hilltop overlooking the Arava Valley (Courtesy PR)

In the Negev, Six Senses Shaharut boasts of being Israel’s first LEED certified hotel.

While the hotel is designed to blend aesthetically into the desert landscape, it also boasts a 25% reduction in energy consumption compared to a traditional hotel of a similar size. The hotel composts food waste to feed the organic garden which partially supplies the kitchen, bottles water on site to avoid plastic, donates used cooking oil to make biodiesel in the community, and uses a palm grove to absorb 100% of the treated wastewater on site.

Similarly, one of Isrotel’s more recent properties, Mitzpe Hayamim, started its eco-friendly existence by renovating an existing hotel building.

Mitzpe Hayamim, Isrotel’s back-to-nature resort between Rosh Pina and Tzfat (Linoy&Dror Styling)

While focusing on delivering a luxury holiday experience, it draws on the orchards, fields of herbs, livestock farm, dairy and organic farm that surround it to supply the hotel restaurants with fresh seasonal ingredients with minimal travel involved. The spa uses natural oils gathered from the Mitzpe Hayamim farm.

Despite the advances, Shor noted that the sustainable building space in Israel is “not yet a mature market.”

One major issue: scalability. While Israelis have proven adept at creating tech solutions via easily adaptable and expandable software, green building requires not just going green, but also constructing actual buildings.

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Bids for Hoover Bridge, construction on county buildings discussed by commissioners | News

Inez Caron July 17, 2022

Bids for the Hoover Bridge Project, an increase in county resident deaths, and renovated buildings for the health department, probation offices, and community corrections were discussed at the Cass County Commissioners meeting on Monday afternoon.

The highway department received two bids from construction companies to complete joint repairs in the Hoover Bridge. The first bid was from Milestone Contractors LP and quoted a price of $62,613.82. The second bid was submitted by Park Construction Inc. and quoted a price of $89,596.50.

The commissioners voted to allow the highway department to take both bids under advisement.

Highway Department Supervisor Jeff Smith also updated the commissioners on the department’s switch to four-day work weeks.

“I think most of the (highway department employees) are looking at it,” he said. “I’ve started the process of comparing costs, and I know we’ve saved considerably on overtime here in June. ... Hopefully another month or two of data will show more conclusively how we’re doing, but it’s going well. We seem to get more done in a day, especially if it’s a project where you just need a little more time to finish it. Overall, I think it’s going well and being received well.”

Cass County Coroner George Franklin said the county has seen a rise in deaths compared to this point last year.

“We’re about 13 deaths ahead of where we were at the same time last year,” he said. “I discussed with several different coroners from different counties, and far and wide with few exceptions, most of them are facing the same numbers that we are.”

Franklin said there might be a few different factors contributing to the rise. He noted that there were three drug overdose deaths in Cass County last year. This year, drug overdoses have already caused at least seven deaths.

Franklin also said the pandemic has contributed to the rise in deaths.

“It’s not just Indiana, but it seems to be across the nation,” he said. “Am underlying factor that most people agree on is that it’s COVID that’s causing it. Not necessarily COVID deaths, but other things that are related to or associated with COVID.”

The commissioners also heard updates about county building renovations for the health department, probation department, and community corrections.

The first phase of renovations includes repairing the health department building at 1616 Smith St. The building will have the roof and interior replaced and new air handling units and a generator will be installed. The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems will also be replaced and the outside of the building will be repainted and repaired.

The probation department building will receive the second round of renovations. The building’s interior will be lightly updated and will receive new finished and office space, a new ceiling, and updates to the electrical and HVAC systems.

The last building to be renovated is the space for community corrections. The roof if the building will be replaced, the administration space and offices will receive cosmetic updates, and new isolation and counseling rooms will be added on to the existing building.

Work on the health department building will start on July 11 and is expected to be finished before Christmas. Work will then begin on the probation department building around Jan. 9, 2023 and is expected to be finished by April 7, 2023. The community corrections building is expected to be under construction from April 17, 2023 to June 30, 2023.

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