Health and Well-being Requirements within Green Buildings (Advert Reference: SF18-1/ABE/ALWAN)

Achieving sustainable and green certified buildings, has been a highly discussed topic with significant growth and interest among the AEC industry (Architecture, Construction and Engineering) industry in the last decade.

This has led to high demand in the use of Environmental assessment methods (EAM) such as LEED, BREEAM, Green Star and others. At the same time, the well-being and improved satisfaction of users is also growing in importance as building clients are demanding highly complex designs with lower operational costs. However, the importance of well-being is not being reflected in the criteria or EAM, which is only focused on technical aspects such as material use and energy profiling from a developer, not user, point of view.

The focus of this PhD research is to deliver new strategic innovative approaches to integration of health and wellbeing criteria within EAMs, which are currently under-represented in most Green benchmarking tools. The project could cover both aspects of construction from new projects to retrofitting. It could for example involve process models, which integrate carbon use and daylight factors with movement levels and user satisfaction. The research will focus on developing and defining a benchmarking agenda for a new generation of tools that will influence thoughts and future direction of sustainability and health and well-being requirements within buildings. The work could include digital aspects, such as BIM.

Please note eligibility requirement:

* Academic excellence of the proposed student i.e. 2:1 (or equivalent GPA from non-UK universities [preference for 1st class honours]) in architecture, engineering, construction, computing or technology discipline; or a Masters (preference for Merit or above); or APEL evidence of substantial practitioner achievement.
* Appropriate IELTS score, if required.

This project is well suited to motivated and hard-working candidates with a keen interest in social housing, sustainability, building performance, BIM. The applicant should have excellent communication skills including proven ability to write in English.

For further details of how to apply, entry requirements and the application form, see
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research-degrees/how-to-apply/

Please note: Applications that do not include a research proposal of approximately 1,000 words (not a copy of the advert), or that do not include the advert reference (e.g. SF18-1/ABE/ALWAN) will not be considered.

Start Date: 1 March 2019 or 1 June 2019 or 1 October 2019

Northumbria University takes pride in, and values, the quality and diversity of our staff. We welcome applications from all members of the community. The University holds an Athena SWAN Bronze award in recognition of our commitment to improving employment practices for the advancement of gender quality and is a member of the Euraxess network, which delivers information and support to professional researchers.