Case Study Open Access Industrial Engineering & Management I n d u s t r i a l E n g i n e e ri n g & M a n a g e m e n t ISSN: 2169-0316 Shahu, Ind Eng Manage 2017, 6:4 DOI: 10.4172/2169-0316.1000229 Volume 6 • Issue 4 • 1000229 Ind Eng Manage, an open access journal ISSN: 2169-0316 Flexibility in Construction Building Structures - A Case Study Rashmi Shahu* Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management (RCOEM), Nagpur, India Abstract Buildings are generally heavy, fxed, and normally irreversible once construction has been completed. Due to changing demands of the occupants, they may confront the need for future expansion or complete changeover. Due to economic-based irreversibility, the expansion or conversion of a constructed building requires the foundation and columns to be enhanced and such options for expansion or conversion are planned at the very beginning of construction. Enhancing the foundation and columns represents an up-front cost, but has a return in fexibility for future expansion. This trade-off can be viewed as an investment problem, in that a premium has to be paid frst for an option that can be exercised later. An optimum choice is required to be taken for foundations versus fexibility trade-off in order to balance the expected profts that may arise from future expansion, i.e., the value of fexibility, and the cost of enhancing the foundation. The authors in this paper explain a case of an educational institution in order to show the value of fexibility. The value of fexibility in this case study is so signifcant that failure to account for fexibility is not economical. *Corresponding author: Rashmi Shahu, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management (RCOEM), Nagpur, India, Tel: +917122580011; E-mail: rashmishahu17@gmail.com Received August 28, 2017; Accepted September 06, 2017; Published September 13, 2017 Citation: Shahu R (2017) Flexibility in Construction Building Structures - A Case Study. Ind Eng Manage 6: 229. doi:10.4172/2169-0316.1000229 Copyright: © 2017 Shahu R. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Keywords: Flexibility; Building structures; Occupant’s requirement; Mathematical model; Cost and beneft of fexibility Introduction Tere is some or the other uniqueness in each construction project due to which change in the construction process is inevitable on most construction projects. Change is defned as any event or situations that results in a modifcation or alterations of the original scope, execution time, or cost of work [1]. Such changes occur on a project for many reasons, such as design errors, design changes, additions to the scope, or unknown conditions. Each such change has a high impact on the original cost and schedule of the project [1]. In most of the industries where there is a stable environment the changes are predictable and are not frequent. Due to which the critical variables can be identifed and a plan can be developed for the same. However, in extremely turbulent and dynamic environments like construction industry where change is frequent and unpredictable, it becomes difcult to go through the routine process and follow the plan. Hence fexibility becomes inevitable for such environments [2]. Te present study explores the scope of structural design characteristics of building (fexible building structure) that can make the renovation work much easy and relatively less costly. Te study uses 3 major renovation cases of old educational building projects for exploring the scope of design fexibility in building structures. Literature Review Tere is a huge mismatch between what the occupant requirement is and how the building is functioning. Most of the large construction projects are planned at least 5-6 years in advance. During this time, demands on the infrastructure are likely to change signifcantly. Changing demands may result from new forms of construction technology, changes in government regulations, change of rules in funding agencies, etc. Tere are many key stakeholders who are directly linked with a construction projects like project owners, users, project management, architects, consultants, and contractors. With so many stakeholders playing a key role there is scope of frequent changes in the requirements of each stakeholder. Tis creates a need of fexibility in the construction projects [3]. It has been observed that a very little thought has been given on the design of fexible building structure to meet future requirement. Te building developers do not want to invest for attaining future fexibility of buildings, particularly when the future requirement is not known [4]. In the present dynamic society where the occupants requirement are changing very fast, the buildings need to be design so as to adapt to the changing needs of its occupants. It has been observed that in order to cater to the occupant’s requirements, relatively young buildings (10-25 years old) are demolished. For a ready adaptation to market fuctuations it would be good to impose the condition that the building, along with its installations should be suitable for several uses [5]. Tis is not a desirable situation in terms of investment, waste production, energy, materials and sustainability of building [6]. Tere is a need to increase the functional life span of building which could be achieved if the buildings could easily be adapted to new occupant requirements [7]. It is therefore important to look at buildings from a broader perspective than just the frst occupant requirements. “Flexibility can be defned as the ability to change or react with little penalty time, efort, cost or performance” [8]. Flexibility is a property of a building that is realized to some extent in all projects, even if it had not been actually taken into account in during the design phase. Tere are certain design characteristics of building which makes it feasible for a building for renovation work. Tere is a need to understand these design characteristics in order to save the future renovation cost. Te projects in which there was a scope of fexibility in process, decision making, design, etc. showed higher level of success rate as compared to the projects with rigid system [9]. Method A case study approach was used in this study to explore the scope of fexibility in design structures that makes renovation work easy. 3 major cases of renovation of old educational buildings were studied. Te description of which is given below.