The growing pressure to optimise construction investment costs from the life-cycle perspective inevitably leads to efforts to seek new solutions that will facilitate informed decision-making in the early stages of the construction project. Awareness of the importance of considering future operation and demolition costs emphasises the shortcomings related to the possibility of making accurate predictions/estimations of such costs, which will become apparent in the future. To address this research gap, an innovative approach of life-cycle cost modelling on the level of individual structures of the building is presented. The model provides users with information on the costs of available technical solutions resulting from the requirements of the investor at a specific stage of the construction project. In this way, it helps investors optimise their building projects and to find the most economical solutions. Specifically, this model is assembled for the purpose of selecting a suitable partition wall and, therefore, it takes into consideration specific characteristics relating to this particular type of structure. The results indicate diversity in partition wall structural design variants at the early stage of the project. Since the ability to influence future costs decreases as the project progresses, the model allows capturing LCC perspective even if only a construction study is available without more detailed technical and economic information. The presented model aims to contribute to the higher performance of construction projects in the planning phase from the perspective of LCC and investors’/owners’ point of view.

This paper is concerned with early cost estimation of sport facilities. Sufficiently precise cost estimation is essential for investors in the pre-investment stage where they decide on whether to pursue an investment and choose a suitable technical solution for the development of the project. Through a detailed analysis of the technical and economic documentation pertaining to seven sport facilities projects assembled using concrete prefabricated beam parts, as well as evaluation of the data thus obtained, three types of technical-economic indicators were set in relation to the enclosed building area, the number of spectator seats and the sports playing area. The results achieved indicate that evaluation of relations between these three indicators could contribute to a more effective use of investment funding on the part of the investor. Other conclusions include the finding that available indicators published by private companies active in the area of construction budgeting are not sufficiently accurate for the purposes of investment decision-making; specifically, these indicators greatly overestimate the costs of sport facilities, which can potentially lead to these projects being rejected. This contribution brings know-how for a more accurate early cost estimation of sport facilities in the Czech Republic which can, thanks to a generally applicable methodology, be used in other countries as well.

The need to use Building Information Modelling (BIM), which brings multiple benefits, including sustainable construction, in the Czech Republic is also reflected in the area of construction-economic systems. Construction-economic systems include building cost estimation, LCC calculation and facility management. The Czech construction sector is hampered by the diversity of these systems, despite the need for them to be interconnected and share data amongst themselves. For this reason, previous research has proposed a general connecting database to integrate data from the individual systems and effectively share them also within the framework of BIM designing. This paper generally describes further possibilities of expanding the connecting database to include another level. Specifically, this is demonstrated on one of the functional parts, i.e. the wall. A more detailed classification with attributes necessary for conclusive listing in the price database is proposed for the selected functional part.

The growing pressure to ensure sustainable construction is also associated with stricter demands on the cost-effectiveness of construction and operation of buildings and reduction of their environmental impact. This paper presents a methodology for building life cycle cost estimation that enables investors to identify the optimum material solution for their buildings on the level of functional parts. The functionality of a comprehensive model that takes into account investor requirements and links them to a construction cost estimation database and a facility management database is verified through a case study of a “façade composition” functional part, with sublevel “external thermal insulation composite system (ETICS) with thin plaster”. The results show that there is no generally applicable optimum ETICS material solution, which is caused by differing investor requirements, as well as the unique circumstances of each building and its user. The solution presented in this paper aims to aid investor decision-making regarding the choice of the building materials while taking the Life Cycle Cost (LCC) into account.

Launching and manipulation of polaritons in van der Waals materials offers novel opportunities for field-enhanced molecular spectroscopy and photodetection, among other applications. Particularly, the highly confined hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs) in h-BN slabs attract growing interest for their capability of guiding light at the nanoscale. An efficient coupling between free space photons and HPhPs is, however, hampered by their large momentum mismatch. Here, we show -by far-field infrared spectroscopy, infrared nanoimaging and numerical simulations- that resonant metallic antennas can efficiently launch HPhPs in thin h-BN slabs. Despite the strong hybridization of HPhPs in the h-BN slab and Fabry-Pérot plasmonic resonances in the metal antenna, the efficiency of launching propagating HPhPs in h-BN by resonant antennas exceeds significantly that of the non-resonant ones. Our results provide fundamental insights into the launching of HPhPs in thin polar slabs by resonant plasmonic antennas, which will be crucial for phonon-polariton based nanophotonic devices.

With global emergence of Building Information Modelling (BIM), the Czech Republic needs to adapt the systems currently used for accessing projects to the new way of designing. Unfortunately, the main emphasis in the Czech Republic is still put on the first stage of the project, i.e. the creation of a 3D model. Converting a 3D model into a BIM model also requires information needed by other civil engineering fields. Consequently, it is necessary to determine which kinds of information must be supplied to BIM models and also how to input or import data from other software tools or systems. This article focuses on construction-economic systems, which comprise the cost estimation of buildings, modelling life-cycle costs, and administration in the operation phase of a building. The main problem encountered in the Czech Republic is the disparate nature of BIM databases, price databases, LCC databases and building administration databases. This article aims to propose a database of functional parts that could serve to connect the individual databases, or at least provide means to aggregate the individual databases in a proposed structure of functional units.

Life cycle costs (LCC) of buildings are an important factor during the investment decision-making. They help identify future costs that will accrue over the lifecycle of the building. Besides the investment phase, the most significant costs are those related to operation, such as utilities, cleaning and repairs, replacements, and maintenance of the individual parts of the building. At the same time, these costs are the easiest to control during the pre-investment phase, and are therefore the focus of this paper. The main object of the paper is to show the calculation method and the use of current data necessary to calculate material LCC and their transfer so that they could be used for facility management using the specific example of smooth surface roofing.

Life cycle costs of a building structures should be properly managed by companies that own and operate the building because the total costs are often very high. It is estimated that purchases of material alone represent approximately 60% of the total construction costs and, furthermore, as some structures have a limited lifetime, replacements of these structures must be taken into account as well. This paper aims to propose conceptual framework enabling detailed planning and monitoring of these costs in time. The presented framework deals with the entire life cycle of the structure, from the construction to its operation to the demolition at the end of its lifetime. Formulas enabling to estimate the individual life cycle cost items (such as construction costs, maintenance costs, repair costs and replacement costs) are proposed in order to facilitate business activities. The proposed framework has an ambition to be implemented in facility management software solutions and to be used by owners of residential buildings, office buildings or production facilities. Additionally, this solution may also be used to facilitate building life cycle costs estimation in public procurement, as a basis for estimating the environmental burden, or as a decision-making aid in selecting optimal material characteristics for newly constructed or renovated buildings.

Life-cycle costing is an important part of every construction project, as it makes it possible to take into consideration future costs relating to the operation and demolition phase of a built structure. In this way, investors can optimize the project design to minimize the total project costs. Even though there have already been some attempts to implement BIM software in the Czech Republic, the current state of affairs does not support automated data flow between the bill of costs and applications that support building facility management. The main aim of this study is to critically evaluate the current situation and outline a future framework that should allow for the use of the data contained in the bill of costs to manage building operating costs.

Slow IT adoption is a characteristic feature of the construction sector. This paper aims to reveal the extent and structure of software equipment in companies and the impact that selected parameters have on the decision to adopt it. Data collected through a web based survey from Czech civil engineering companies has been evaluated and compared with regard to the type of company (project, construction, geology and geotechnics, engineering). According to the fmdings of the paper, the price of software is not the most important aspect with regard to the decision on its acquisition. On the other hand, the data indicates that different types of companies have a different attitude to software. In particular, specific aspects related to geological and geotechnical companies are addressed and discussed in the paper. The findings also show a relatively high usage of custom software and a low level of BIM technology adoption. Despite the availability of many sophisticated software solutions, many companies still rely on simple MS Excel spreadsheets used for various purposes (such as business, management, or internal record-keeping).