Reach for the Sky

The race to dominate the skyline continues apace as the tallest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa (Khalifa Tower) in Dubai is set to be eclipsed during the first half of 2013 by the 220 storey Sky City.  Built in Changsha, in the Hunan Province of China, it will top out at 838 metres, beating the Burj Khalifa by a mere 10 metres.  Peanuts!

However, the more interesting aspect of Sky City’s development is it’s method of construction.  Constructed by Broad Sustainable Building, 95% of Sky City’s fabric features prefabricated construction techniques which will allow the construction to progress at 5 storeys a day.  Developments in off site manufacturing techniques and materials development have meant that Sky City is able to boast impressive statistics for environmental, sustainability and health and safety measures.  The financial and programme savings achievable by construction the majority of a building of this size and height at ground level cannot be underestimated.  BSB are expecting to finish this building within 90 days, an astonishing achievement, which, if previous projects are any measure of potential, will be achieved.  The video link at the bottom shows the completion of a 30 storey hotel in 15 days.

The current mantra for development and construction is that the price and unavailability of land is pushing developers upwards, rather than outwards.  To meet this increasing trend, technical construction techniques require to develop ever faster to meet the demands and technical requirements.  The Chinese appear to be spearheading these developments at present, in July, Zhang Yue, Chief Executive Officer, Broad Sustainable Building, told a Reuters magazine that he plans build at a two-kilometre high, 636-floor tower.

This will be bad news for the Kingdom Holding Company, whose Chairman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said in June 2012 that the 1,000-metre high tall Kingdom Tower in Jeddah will be completed by mid-2017.  That is not all, Avesta Group an Azerbaijan company, has advanced plans to build what at the time would be the tallest tower in the world, standing at 1,050 metres, surrounded by number of artificial islands and a Formula One racetrack. This project is likely to be completed between 2020 and 2025, but will it be eclipsed before it’s even built?.

View the BSB hotel development here:

http://bit.ly/Umanuu

James Alexander Consultants eMail us on innovation@jaltd.co.uk or see our contact page for our numbers.  We look forward to speaking with you.

K is for...

Key Performance Indicators:

In today’s business and commercial world the monitoring and measuring of activity becomes ever more relevant in establishing agreed levels and quality of service delivery, related costs and value for money, and the continuing relevance of the delivery, specification and quality.

A long established manner of enabling this is to establish key performance indicators (KPIs).  KPIs are primarily used by organisations to evaluate their success or the success of a specific activity in which it is engaged.  Choosing the right KPI, by understanding what is important to the organisation and determining what therefore will enable relevant assessment to be made is fundamental to the process.  Assessment and analysis of the results can lead to the development of improvements to process and procedure, potentially to cost saving and initiatives to develop other performance improvements.

KPIs in the property and construction industries have been developed for many applications.  In the construction industry annual assessment of a wide range of standard KPIs has taken place for over 10 years.  These indicators are published in the annual UK Industry Performance Report.  The indicators are wide ranging through subjects as diverse as economic, safety and environmental impact and are designed to enable the improvement of performance, as well as the ability of companies to benchmark their individual company performance against industry standards.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) has a number of programmes in the application of excellence in construction, refurbishment and improvement of the built environment, each designed to monitor, manage and improve performance in the application.  These programmes are effectively a form of KPI, enabling the standard of development and build quality to be measured against required guidelines.  Their programme BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) provides a comprehensive set of parameters against which the built estate can be measured for the development’s potential impact against environmental and sustainable criteria with differing levels of award able to be achieved.

Combined with benchmarking exercises, KPIs  allow for organisations to assess their own internal performance criteria and also rate that against competitors and the market, the results, hopefully being for continuous performance improvement and achieving better value for money.

James Alexander Consultants can help you identify areas of performance improvement in your asset management and portfolio.  We develop, plan and implement the strategy, leaving you to focus on core activity and opportunity.

eMail us on innovation@jaltd.co.uk or see our contact page for our numbers.  We look forward to speaking with you.