Previous Seminars and Conferences
The School runs regular seminars on a number of topics. Below are some details of past events that might be of interest.
Facing the challenge - Global and UK progress in achieving sustainable concrete construction
Date: 16 May 2012
Venue: W0.01, Sir David Davies Building, Loughborough University
A Sustainable Concrete Forum event in collaboration with Loughborough University
Provisional programme:
- Introduction and welcome – Martin Clarke, Chairman & Professor Dennis Loveday, Loughborough University
- A global review of progress in achieving sustainable concrete construction – Professor Dr Koji Sakai, Kagawa University, Japan
- Review of the Cement Sustainability Initiative – Dr Philippe Fonta, WBSCD, Geneva
- Sustainability achievements at the London Olympics – Hattie Hartman, Sustainability Editor, Architects Journal
- The new UK strategy for sustainable concrete to 2020 – Andy Spencer, Sustainability Director Cemex UK, Chairman of SCF
- Progress and plans in the UK readymix sector – Jeremy Greenwood, Managing Director Lafarge Readymix, Chairman BRMCA
- Progress and plans in precast and masonry – Martin Clarke, Chief Executive, British Precast
- The UK construction challenge – Don Ward, Chief Executive, Constructing Excellence
- Chairman – summary/Q&A
The seminar will be preceded with a reception and buffet from 1-2pm in Civil and Building Engineering, Frank Gibb Building, Loughborough University.
Research Seminar
Speaker(s): Professor Chimay Anumba
Date: 16 May 2012
Venue: Design Studio (RT.0.29), Civil and Building Engineering
Chimay will be presenting a research seminar which includes an update on Penn State?s $129m Energy Efficient Buildings Hub. More details to follow, but put the date in your diary!
Resilience and Complexity: Reacting to the unknowable in the context of the unpredictable
Speaker(s): Professor Brian Collins
Date: 16 May 2012
Venue: TBC
This presentation and workshop will be the third event in the Building Resilience into Complex Systems series. More details will be available nearer the time, but mark the date in your diaries now!
The presentation is open to all members of the University and there will be no charge for attendance.
Please contact Dr. Patrick Waterson by 14 March 2012 to book your place for the workshop.
The network organisers are drawn from across the University, and include the School's Professor Andrew Dainty and Dr Lee Bosher.
Click here to find out more.
BIM - Building Information Modelling
Speaker(s): Simon Graham, Bite Design Ltd
Date: 2 May 2012
Venue: RT.0.37, Civil and Building Engineering
Building Information Modelling (BIM) is the hot topic of 2011 and the East Midlands Branch of CIOB is pleased to offer a welcome insight into BIM.
Following the announcement in March 2011 that all members of the public sector supply chain will be required to have a Building Information Modelling capability by 2016, BIM has been a constant topic of debate in the industry.
To introduce our members to the topic, the East Midlands Branch have arranged for Simon Graham of Bite Design Ltd to host a CPD session at Loughborough University. The session will provide an introduction into:
- What BIM is
- How 3D design tools differ from traditional methods
- The value BIM can provide
- 4D & 5D BIM
- Stakeholder collaboration through BIM
- Some of the main issues encountered when implementing BIM
Following the session, Simon will then welcome any questions attendees may have around BIM and 3D software packages.
Click here to find out more.
Resilience Engineering Workshop
Speaker(s): Professor Erik Hollnagel
Date: 4 April 2012
Venue: Burleigh Court, Loughborough University
This second event in the Building Resilience into Complex Systems series aims to help researchers to work towards research proposals which can eventually be submitted for funding from the major research councils (e.g., EPSRC, ESRC). Small amounts of funding (up to £3000) to support networking activities will be available for successful projects which come about as a result of the workshops.
Lunch will be provided.
Please contact Dr. Patrick Waterson by 31 March 2012 to book your place.
The network organisers are drawn from across the University, and include the School's Professor Andrew Dainty and Dr Lee Bosher.
Click here to find out more.
A Bird's eye view of Resilience Engineering
Speaker(s): Professor Erik Hollnagel
Date: 3 April 2012
Venue: Burleigh Court, Loughborough University
This presentation is the first in a series of presentations and workshops entitled Building Resilience into Complex Systems which provides an opportunity to join a campus-wide network and gain funding for pilot projects.
Professor Erik Hollnagel's talk will present the rationale for resilience engineering and the fundamental principles. After its inception around 2004, Resilience Engineering (RE) soon attracted widespread interest from academia and industry, where many practitioners became early adopters. The challenges and opportunities from practical applications have marked the development of resilience engineering since then. RE has identified four abilities that are essential for a system to be resilient: a) to respond to what happens, b) to monitor critical developments, c) to anticipate future threats and opportunities, and d) to learn from past experience - successes as well as failures. Focusing on these four abilities provides a structured way of analysing problems and issues, as well as of proposing practical solutions (concepts, tools, and methods).
The presentation is open to all members of the University and there will be no charge for attendance.
The network organisers are drawn from across the University, and include the School's Professor Andrew Dainty and Dr Lee Bosher.
Click here to find out more.
Visiting Academic Seminar: The global energy crisis and housing stocks: the Canadian perspective
Speaker(s): Dr. Ismet Ugursal, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Date: 5 December 2011
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
Characteristics, trends and consequences of global energy consumption will be discussed. Efforts to model and reduce energy consumption in the Canadian housing stock will be presented as an example of the wide range of similar efforts that affluent nations use to curb their energy consumption. Based on these, questions will be posed regarding the present and future of energy supply and demand, and a few answers will be proposed to encourage thinking from perspectives that are not commonly considered.
Click here to find out more.
Visiting Academic Seminar: Renewable Energy in Barbados and the Caribbean
Speaker(s): Tom Rogers, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados
Date: 21 November 2011
Venue: Design Studio (RT.0.29), Civil and Building Engineering
Following a short overview of the University, this presentation will review the existing fossil fuel dominated energy mix in Barbados before exploring the island's renewable energy options. These currently include wind, solar, biomass and marine power. As with other Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Barbados is reliant on tourism, which yields a large percentage of the island's foreign exchange earnings. However, the hotel sector is a significant consumer of energy, and hence increasingly susceptible to rising electricity costs. With this in mind, renewable energy and energy efficiency options for hotels will also be discussed. The presentation concludes with the current state of renewable energy on the Cave Hill campus and future plans.
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Bayesian Statistical Models
Speaker(s): Professor Simon Washington - Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Date: 5 October 2011
Venue: Design Studio (RT.0.29), Civil and Building Engineering
There are several motivations for estimating useful and defensible statistical models of motor vehicle crashes, including the assessment of transportation system wide safety, the identification of causal or contributing factors in crashes, and the ability to identify sites performing ?worse than expected?. This paper proposes some fundamental improvements in how crash data from a transportation systems perspective are modeled and understood. There is a vast literature debating the merits of different statistical models fit to crash data. Despite these cumulative efforts, there still remain a number of fundamental, unresolved issues regarding our collective understanding and modeling of crash data — all of which are addressed in the talk. First, we have generally accepted that crash counts are the result of a single underlying process — and can be successfully modeled as such. Second, the profession largely ignores human factors issues when modeling system locations — thus allowing these factors to enter into statistical models as error or bias. Finally, unobserved spatial effects also contribute to model error and bias. It is argued here that observed crashes are the result of three largely separate underlying processes. A Bayesian statistical model system is proposed and estimated via Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. The model system mechanics and distributional assumptions are discussed in addition to Bayesian priors, which are obtained from exogenous information regarding motor vehicle crashes. The contribution of this newly proposed modeling process to our basic understanding of crash causation and modeling, the practical implications may also be quite significant.
Click here to find out more.
HaCIRIC International Conference 2011
Date: 26 September 2011 – 28 September 2011
Venue: The Lowry Hotel, Manchester
Global health infrastructure – challenges for the next decade. Delivering innovation, demonstrating the benefits
This event brought together researchers and practitioners from across disciplines and countries to focus on key challenges in the provision of healthcare infrastructure for the 21st century.
It has been estimated that $3.6 trillion may be spent on global healthcare infrastructure between 2010 and 2020. The rapidly developing nations are expected to see especially strong growth as they invest in their health systems. Across the world governments will seek to manage this huge expenditure to both attain efficiency and strengthen the market for private investment. But planning and delivering high value infrastructure and scaling-up from innovative pilot projects to main stream adoption are significant challenges, especially given the pace of change in medical practices and healthcare models, and the current global landscape of economic uncertainty and instability.
Click here for further information on the conference.
WEDC International Conferences
Date: 1 September 1973 – 8 July 2011
Venue: Various across Africa and Asia
The WEDC International Conference is a highly respected, global platform for practitioners, decision makers, academics and researchers who lead water and sanitation innovation in developing countries.
Conceived in the early 1970s, the Conference is held regularly in either Africa or Asia and is the only conference of its type to be co-organized and hosted in a developing country. Our previous 34 conferences have been attended by over 8500 participants from 80 countries; our conference collection of over 1700 papers is a unique resource for the sector.
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of WEDC in 2011, we are very pleased to announce that the 35th WEDC International Conference will be held at Loughborough University, UK, from 6th to 8th July 2011.
Click here to find out more about WEDC International Conferences.
HaCIRIC Workshop: Planning for more resilient healthcare in emergencies
Date: 23 June 2011
Venue: Room KG107, Keith Green Building, Loughborough University
The UK has been developing strategies and methods to ensure the continuity of its healthcare services at all times; however, recent events (e.g. the 2007 summer floods and 2009/10 snowfall) resulted in many cancelled operations and raised questions about the resilience of healthcare during major events.
This workshop aims to bring together a multi disciplinary group to share their experiences and discuss how the resilience of emergency services to major incidents and extreme weather events could be improved.
For more information, including the Call and the draft programme for the day, please visit the HaCIRIC website.
Research Seminar: Innovating for sustainability – risks and opportunities
Speaker(s): Martin Loosemore, Professor of Construction Management at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Date: 16 June 2011
Venue: Design Studio (RT.0.29), Civil and Building Engineering
The presentation points to the emotive and uninformed nature of the sustainability debate and our cognitive inability to understand and interpret it rationally. Exploring the reasons behind this and drawing from recent research into leading firms' sustainability strategies, the presentation concludes with a series of lessons which may help firms minimize the risks and maximize the opportunities of innovating in response to the sustainability agenda.
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Energy Efficient Buildings Innovation Hub
Speaker(s): Chimay J. Anumba, Department Head and Professor of Architectural Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
Date: 10 June 2011
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
This seminar will provide an overview of ongoing work at the $129m DOE-funded innovation hub for energy efficient buildings based at Penn State.
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Network Structure and Travel Behaviour
Speaker(s): Professor David Levinson, Richard P. Braun / CTS Chair in Transportation, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota, USA
Date: 25 May 2011
Venue: Design Studio (RT.0.29), Civil and Building Engineering
Transportation networks have an underlying structure, defined by the layout, arrangement and the connectivity of the individual network elements, namely the road segments and their intersections. The differences in network structure exist among and between networks. This presentation argues that travellers perceive and respond to these differences in underlying network structure and complexity, resulting in differences in observed travel patterns. This hypothesized relationship between network structure and travel is analyzed using individual and aggregate level travel and network data from metropolitan regions across the U.S. Various measures of network structure, compiled from existing sources, are used to quantify the structure of street networks. The relation between these quantitative measures and travel is then identified using econometric models.
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Towards Robust Research Methodologies
Speaker(s): Hedley Smyth, Senior Lecturer, Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, University College London
Date: 25 May 2011
Venue: Design Studio (RT.0.29), Civil and Building Engineering
This seminar will provide a brief overview of methodological approaches for context and then focus particularly upon grounded theory – its use and misuse.
Click here to find out more.
Research seminar
Speaker(s): Professor Susan Cozzens
Date: 11 May 2011
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
Susan will present a seminar introducing us to Georgia Tech and aspects of her research. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session and refreshments.
Visiting Academic Seminar: How Practice Challenges Academia
Speaker(s): Professor David Boyd, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society Research, Birmingham City University
Date: 2 March 2011
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
This seminar will explore the differences between practice and academic perspectives of the construction industry with a particular focus on practitioner action and how it can be improved. It will use phenomenological data gathered from numerous practitioners during an AHRC project to demonstrate its argument. The significance of this has implications for the validity of research and for how academia can have a positive impact on practice.
Click here to find out more.
Future Directions in Lean Healthcare: Delivering Value in Planning and Design
Speaker(s): Professor Glenn Ballard, Professor Lauri Koskela, Grant Mills, Peter Court
Date: 27 January 2011
Venue: Loughborough University
Lean is central to delivering transformational improvements in NHS estates utilisation and quality. The purpose of this workshop is to determine the future for research and development in lean and its role in achieving reconfiguration, space rationalisation and clinical productivity.
When applied to healthcare planning, design and operations, lean can improve efficiency, productivity and value. It can change the flow of people, goods, information and wastes at various scales from spaces, to departments and from departments to whole organisational processes and regional systems. Healthcare planners, architects and construction professionals are designing modern healthcare facilities that aim to be delivered on time and within set budgets but sometimes mistakes lead to backflows, waiting and reductions in patient satisfaction.
The Workshop invites industrialists to join with researchers to define a future direction for lean healthcare estates planning and design. There is a huge need for new thinking in meeting expanding demand while controlling rising costs, improving quality and raising productivity. In 2008 and again in 2010 the Chancellor identified improvements to NHS estate utilisation as a key saving area in 2010/11-2012/13, potentially reducing in 2010/11 the need for new hospital space by up to £3bn and saving up to £100m per annum of estate costs.
Click here to find out more.
Lean Construction Seminar
Speaker(s): Professor Glenn Ballard, Professor Lauri Koskela, along with Directors of LCI uk and leading industrialists
Date: 26 January 2011
Venue: W0.01, Sir David Davies Building
What is Lean? What does it mean for construction? How can it reduce waste in project delivery and achieve higher client satisfaction? Where does one start improvement and what follows?
These and related questions will be the focus of analysis and discussion at the Lean Construction Seminar, organised by the IMCRC in collaboration with LCI UK, ECI and HaCIRIC (Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre).
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Prevention through Design
Speaker(s): John Gambatese, Oregon State University
Date: 26 January 2011
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
Prevention through Design is a major, cross industry initiative in the USA, funded by NIOSH (the US equivalent of the research arm of the HSE). The initiative has been investigating the prevention of accidents and ill health through early action during the design process. John has been leading the work in the construction sector, which does not have, and is unlikely to have the equivalent of the UK's Construction (Design & Management) regulations [CDM]. Research teams from Loughborough have been working with John on this initiative.
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Leader Standard Work and Operations Design
Speaker(s): Professor Glenn Ballard, Construction Engineering and Management Program Faculty, University of California – Berkeley and Stanford, USA
Date: 24 January 2011
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
The phrase "leader standard work" comes from a book by David Mann, 'Creating a Lean Culture', in which supervisors at every organizational level are advised to: Develop their people; Enforce standard work processes; and Improve standard work processes. Development occurs through involving workers in the design of the operations for which they are responsible. Glenn's presentation will illustrate what can be done in construction. The topic is also closely akin to his concern that we stay grounded in how work is actually done, whether in a design office or on a construction site.
Click here to find out more.
Visiting Academic Seminar: Pedestrians in New Jersey
Speaker(s): Robert Noland, Professor, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA
Date: 11 January 2011
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
Whilst New Jersey (most densely populated state in the US) has pockets of pedestrian friendly areas, much of the state is overrun with large arterial roads that make walking difficult, dangerous or impossible. Data on pedestrian activity was collected, enabling analysis of walking frequency/development of models considering individu- als? socio-economics and built environment variables in their neighbourhood. We found that although built environment features have no influence on walking, they exert an indirect effect by their association with car ownership (more 'walkable' neighbourhoods led to fewer cars). We conducted spatial analysis of pedestrian fatalities/injuries in New Jersey, examining how road, demographic and land use charac- teristics may be associated with them. Overall results suggest ar- eas with greater population density have fewer fatalities whilst those with more intense employment have both greater fatalities and injuries. Lower income areas tend to have more victims, but those from lower income areas also tend to be victims in different areas. One of the most interesting findings is that areas with more "ramps" have more pedestrian injuries and fatalities.
Click here to find out more.
Visiting Academic Seminar: City University and the bright lights of Hong Kong
Speaker(s): Dr Ellen Lau, Senior Lecturer, City University of Hong Kong
Date: 11 November 2010
Venue: Design Studio (RT.0.29), Civil and Building Engineering
In this research seminar, Ellen will present an overview of City University of Hong Kong, her division and provide a photo album tour of Hong Kong. Her current research is on trust and empowerment of design, cost and construction teams. Ellen will provide some empirical findings from her current study on empowerment and previous work on trust.
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Long-term performance of leachate collection systems and geomembrane liners for MSW landfills
Speaker(s): Professor Kerry Rowe, Professor and Vice-Principal (Research) Department of Civil Engineering, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
Date: 4 November 2010
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
This talk summarizes 12 years research into the service life of granular leachate collection sys- tems and HDPE geomembrane liners used for MSW landfills. It examines the effect of particle size and protection layers on leachate collection system performance and discusses service life issues. It then discusses the effects on geomembrane service life of: (a) the immersion fluid, (b) geomembrane thickness, (c) the presence of an underlying clay liner, (d) the protection layer above the geomembrane, (e) applied stress, (f) location in the liner system (i.e. the difference be- tween service life for primary and secondary liners), and (g) the time-temperature history of the liner. It is shown that under many circumstances service life can be expected to be many centu- ries (or longer) but that there are also circumstances when service life could be reduced to a few decades. The service life of both the leachate collection system and geomembrane will depend on design, construction and the operating conditions of the MSW landfill.
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Research at Chalmers University of Technology
Speaker(s): Professor Pernilla Gluch, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
Date: 6 October 2010
Venue: Design Studio (RT.0.29), Civil and Building Engineering
Pernilla Gluch's research interests include organisational, social and behavioural structures and their influence on how strategic change is dealt with in the construction process. She currently holds grants from Formas, SBUF, CMB and cooperates closely with the Swedish construction industry. She gives undergraduate and graduate level courses within the areas of economics and organising of construction and real estate activities.
Click here to find out more.
HaCIRIC International Conference 2010
Date: 23 September 2010
Venue: The Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh
Better healthcare through better infrastructure
This event brought together researchers and practitioners from across disciplines and countries to focus on key challenges in the provision of healthcare infrastructure for the 21st century.
The dilemmas are well-known – trying to meet increased demands for care while controlling rising costs, improving quality and raising productivity. The solutions are more uncertain, but we know that lasting solutions will require system redesign, involving new combinations of technology, services and infrastructure. The conference tackled these issues head-on.
Click here to find out more.
Research Seminar: Fluctuating demands and unexpected events: Improving work-family interaction in project-based construction work
Speaker(s): Professor Helen Lingard, School of Property, Construction and Project Management Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Australia
Date: 10 September 2010
Venue: Fire Station (RT.0.25), Civil and Building Engineering
Throughout a construction project's lifecycle there are critical points at which extraordinarily long working hours have significant impacts on the quality of work-life experiences.
In Melbourne, Australia, participatory research on a number of 'live' construction projects is exploring the extent to which fluctuations in work intensity present opportunities for helping employees to balance their work and non-work lives through providing opportunities for rest and recovery.
Innovative ways of working that provide relief for workers (for example, through job rotation, flexible scheduling, time off in lieu) are being evaluated using a longitudinal experimental design. Preliminary results highlight the importance of regular recovery opportunities for satisfactory work-life 'balance'.
Click here to find out more.
Global Innovation in Construction Conference
Date: 13 September 2009 – 16 September 2009
Venue: Holywell Park, Loughborough University
The conference was a celebration of the contribution that academia and industry have jointly achieved through research and collaboration and an exploration of how research and innovation transfer will continue to develop. It provided a platform to allow academic colleagues and their industrial partners to display and celebrate their achievements.
Click here to find out more about the conference, including videos of the keynote presentations and some photos from the event.
HaCIRIC International Conference 2009
Date: 2 April 2009 – 3 April 2009
Venue: Hilton Metropole Hotel, Brighton
Improving healthcare infrastructures through innovation
Around the world, a renewal of the infrastructure for healthcare is underway. In the UK, over £40bn is being spent on new hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Some estimates suggest that €30-50bn is needed to modernise hospital infrastructure in Germany. Major new investment is planned in eastern Europe and the picture is similar in north America and most of the developing economies. Delivering this ambitious programme poses significant challenges for governments, health providers and industry. These relate to the complex relationships between long lasting infrastructures, rapidly changing technologies and services, and a frequently unstable policy context.
This conference brought together researchers from across disciplines and countries with different healthcare systems to focus on this issue. Areas of particular interest included:
- Integrating infrastructure and service planning. Can we translate service planning into infrastructure asset planning more effectively? Are moves towards greater contestability and a local devolution of responsibilities making this harder? What lessons are there from different national health systems? What tools, models and performance metrics are appropriate?
- Stimulating innovation in infrastructure provision. How can procurement and incentivisation models be designed to deliver innovation? Can policy targets be used more effectively? How do we ensure that innovation is embedded on a sustainable basis? How can the design process be more effectively used to generate innovation? How do we capture and diffuse knowledge of innovative solutions?
- Examples of infrastructure innovation targeted at key problems. Healthcare acquired infection is an example of an area where a multi-disciplinary approach embracing service delivery, behavioural and infrastructure change is needed. We are interested in case studies and research reporting on how this has been tackled, as well as the methodological challenges in conducting such research.
Click here to view the Conference Proceedings.
Civil Engineering Seminar Series
Date: 1 October 2007 – 31 December 2008
Venue: Civil and Building Engineering
The School has run various seminars on topics of interest in Water Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering. Click here to find out more.
1st International Conference on Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent Construction
Speaker(s): Dr Tarek Hassan (Conference Chair)
Date: 14 May 2008 – 16 May 2008
Venue: Henry Ford College, Loughborough
Revolutionary construction and production technologies are needed to enable the development of a sustainable European construction industry, which will deliver flexible and adaptable building space that uses less resources and provides optimum environment to the occupants improving their quality of life and productivity.
This will be achieved by using distributed control systems with embedded sensors, wireless connections, ambient user interfaces and autonomous controllers. New added-value business models with highly specialised SMEs working in radically contracted supply chains will deliver high performance spaces, smart business services and lifecycle solutions.
Click here to find out more.
