Cost Efficient Design

4 Key excerpts on "Cost Efficient Design"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Green Engineering

  Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Design

  • Riadh Habash(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Today, the various energy supply technologies that are used in a carbon-constrained future are extensively under review. This includes designing renewable energy by selecting appropriate technologies and advanced fossil-fuel systems with carbon capture and sequestration. The approach encourages explicit consideration of resilience in both engineered systems and the larger systems in which they are embedded. In addition, energy efficiency technologies are often cited as an essentially important and an often lower cost supplement to supply side developments.

  10.3 Sustainable engineering design

  Design is critical today. It is the first signal of human intension.

  William McDonough Stanford University

  10.3.1 The engineering factor

  In the modern engineering culture, sustainable design has become dominant too and an application for engineers and users as society requirements and financial limitations mount. In all areas of engineering, engineers are advised to ensure that products and services have the maximum lifespan for their planned use and employ the least amount of natural recourses while still meeting client, economic, societal demands and code requirements.

  Although engineering is not one of the three main components of sustainability as discussed in Chapter 2 , it is indirectly linked to each. That is, engineering uses resources to drive much if not most of the world’s economic activity, in virtually all economic sectors. Also, resources used in engineering, whether fuels, minerals, or water, are obtained from the environment, and wastes from engineering processes (production, transport, storage, utilization) are typically released to the environment. Finally, the services provided by engineering allow for good living standards, and often support social development (Rosen 2012). Given the intimate ties between engineering and the key components of SD, it is obvious that the accomplishment of sustainability in engineering is a significant aspect of achieving SD. In fact, Kreith (2012) writes on sustainability, “no subject is more important to the engineering profession or the wider world that we live in.”

  Most engineering activities utilize resources that are derived from nature. Such resources include water, materials (virgin and recycled), and energy. The degree to which resources are sustainable depends on many factors, including their scarcity and importance to ecosystems. An important requirement of sustainable engineering is the use of sustainable processes. This implies that the engineering processes utilized must exhibit sustainable characteristics in terms of the operations and steps they involve, and the energy and materials they utilize. High efficiency allows the greatest benefits, in terms of products or services, to be attained from resources, and thus aid efforts to achieve sustainability. Numerous environmental impacts associated with engineering processes are of concern and must be addressed in efforts to attain sustainability. Some important environmental impacts associated with engineering processes of concern include global climate change; ozone depletion (due to destruction of the atmospheric ozone layer and subsequent increases in ultraviolet reaching the earth’s surface); acidification, and its impact on soil and water; abiotic resource depletion potential; eco-toxicity; and radiological impacts (Rosen 2012).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Computer-Organized Cost Engineering

  • Gideon Samid(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  A Computer Technology View of Cost Engineering

  Cost engineers are civil engineers, mechanical engineers, aeronautical engineers, and nuclear, chemical, and electrical engineers who take engineering a step further-into a cost estimate, into a scheduled plan, into a world of limited resources.

  In the process, they may write a lot of numbers and sum them up. To the uninitiated, the cost engineer looks like a clerk, or like an accountant. At times he looks like an economist. The term “engineering” seems out of place. How wrong! It is subject-matter expertise that governs the profession. That is why a new high-rise cannot be estimated by a clerk, an industrial plant cannot be cost-assessed by an economist, and a nuclear reactor cannot be dollar-evaluated by accountants. The people in these discliplines have their hands full, and their contribution should not be underemphasized, but they are not cost engineers.

  Computers gave the cost engineer a tool that added a new dimension to the profession. The use of computers in itself is an engineering endeavor, and so today the term “(cost) engineering” has a dual meaning: expertise not only in the subject matter but also in using computers in the process of optimizing resource allocation. The modern cost engineer is a central player in a competitive economy. His or her responsibility is to find ways to extract more results from finite dollars and limited time. And, conversely, he or she tries to engineer a solution to the problem of achieving a target result with a smaller investment.

  Available resources are finite; expressive imagination is infinite. This anomaly is the challenge of cost engineering. Passage contains an image

  1Elements

  Cost engineering is a two-way window. Looking through this window the business community relates to science and technology. Looking the other way, scientists and engineers hear and see what business wants and does.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Cost Management in Plastics Processing

  Strategies, Targets, Techniques, and Tools

  • Robin Kent(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier

    (Publisher)

  Although this study is now nearly 20 years old, the indications are that the problem has not gone away and in fact it appears to have become worse. Products consume and waste vast amounts of materials and on average 80% of a product’s overall environmental impact is a result of the design decisions taken at the start of the design process. Focusing on product design improvements and using sustainable design concepts at the start can produce remarkable improvements in resource efficiency and profitability as well as reducing a range of environmental impacts.

  What is sustainable design?

  Sustainable design is design to minimise the environmental impacts over the entire product life cycle and to meet customer requirements. It is a proactive tool to reduce product cost, resource depletion, waste, pollution and the environmental impacts of a product throughout the life cycle.

  Sustainable design involves meeting the customers’ requirements whilst using the minimum amount of resources and creating the minimum amount of environmental impact.

  Sustainable design aims to move from the traditional linear approach to product life (manufacture, use, dispose) to a more cyclical approach to allow material to be re-used or recycled at the end-of-life phase.

  “Sustainability – development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future.” Gro Harlem Bruntland

  Design through the whole cycle

  Sections 2.20 to 2.24 will consider each of the phases of the product life cycle in terms of:

  •  Drivers – what will drive the process of sustainable design. These can be legislative or cost based.

  •  Strategies – the overall strategic actions needed to implement sustainable design. These will be the general responses to the drivers.

  •  Tactics – the detailed tactical actions to achieving sustainable design. These will be the specific responses needed to achieve the strategies.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  Available until 27 Nov |Learn more

  Civil Engineer's Handbook of Professional Practice

  • Karen Hansen, Kent Zenobia, Karen Lee Hansen, Kent E. Zenobia(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)
• The Interface Steps to Sustainability, which were created to guide the interface company in addressing the needs of society and the environment by developing a system of industrial production that decreases their costs and dramatically reduces the burdens placed upon living systems
• The Hannover Principles, which assist planners, government officials, designers, and all involved in setting priorities for the built environment, and promoting an approach to design which may meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability of the planet to sustain an equally supportive future
• Design through the 12 Principles of Green Engineering, which provide a framework for scientists and engineers to engage in when designing new materials, products, processes, and systems that are benign to human health and the environment
Source: Karen Lee Hansen and Jorge A. Vanegas. (2006). “A Guiding Road Map, Principles, and Vision for Researching and Teaching Sustainable Design and Construction.” American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Chicago, IL, Conference Proceedings .