The paper shows methods of analysis and assessment of partnering relations of construction enterprises with the use of questionnaires, statistics, and fuzzy logic. The results were obtained from Polish, Slovak and Ukrainian enterprises. The definition of partnering in the construction industry indicates that it is a qualitative concept. By applying a scale in the questionnaire, and due to mathematical analysis of the data, the final research result, showing the level of partnering relations of construction enterprises, is rendered quantitatively.

The influence that general contractors and subcontractors have on the operation of a company is immense. Keeping this in mind, the authors have decided to develop and algorithm based on the analysis of partnering relations between construction companies that would select the best possible construction company for the purposes of cooperation. This algorithm, developed for a given construction company, is meant to support its decision-making system in the field of the selection of another construction company to cooperate with. The author has made references to earlier research, in which she had used the ELECTRE III method, and in which she bad analysed the possibility of applying the BIPOLAR method in order to solve the problem of the selection of a construction company to develop partnering relations with. The author provided an example of the calculations performed for a selection of construction companies.

The paper presents a method of priority scheduling that is useful during the planning of multiple-structure construction projects. This approach is an extension of the concept of interactive scheduling. In priority scheduling, it is the planner that can determine how important each of the technological and organisational constraints are to them. A planner's preferences can be defined through developing a ranking list that defines which constraints are the most important, and those whose completion can come second. The planner will be able to model the constraints that appear at a construction site more flexibly. The article presents a general linear programming model of the planning of multiple-structure construction projects, as well as various values of each of the parameters that allow us to obtain different planning effects. The proposed model has been implemented in a computer program and its effectiveness has been presented on a calculation example.

The article presents the use of the Mamdani fuzzy reasoning model to develop a proposal of a system controlling partnering relations in construction projects. The system input variables include: current assessments of particular partnering relation parameters, the weights of these parameters’ impact on time, cost, quality and safety of implementation of construction projects, as well as the importance of these project assessment criteria for its manager. For each of the partnering relation parameters, the project’s manager will receive controlrecommendations. Moreover, the parameter to be improved first will be indicated. The article contains a calculation example of the system’s operations.

The article highlights the fact that numerous key decisions in temporary construction organisations are made as a result of informal, non-contractual relationships between organisation members that are not a result of formal organisational structures. These hidden relationships can be visualised in the form of social networks and Social Network Analysis methods (SNA) can be used to perform their structural analysis. In latest studies on self-organising networks in the construction sector, researchers have mostly focused on the design phase of large construction projects, e.g. infrastructural ones. Meanwhile, there exists a need for similar research to focus on temporary organisations created for the purpose of performing construction work. The authors took up this subject and examined a self-organising network of communication between the participants of the construction of a multi-family residential complex located in Katowice, Poland. The structural analysis of this network facilitated its in-depth understanding and identifying certain flaws and dysfunctions concerning individual participants of this project, which became a basis for further discussion. At the same time, the authors highlighted the benefits of managing such a self-organising network in the context of the effective achievement of project goals.

A great number of non-functional child care facilities for children up to the age of three have been created in Poland to this day. This state of affairs may be the consequence of the low level of knowledge in this field, as well as few available studies on topics associated with nursery facilities, which may familiarise readers with the legal aspects, administrative procedures, or examples of good functional and material solutions of such units. What is more, there is also little information about the needs and preferences of people directly related to the topic. The aim of the article is to analyse the expectations and preferences of nursery facilities’ users in terms of the functional and material solutions. Based on a survey conducted among the nurseries’ employees and parents placing their children in the care of such institutions, a number of guidelines has been defined, allowing for the design of an optimal nursery facility that would meet the market’s expectations.

The goal of the article is the diagnosis and presentation of the problems of the selection of construction technologies for buildings being built in the centres of urban agglomerations. The survey and literature studies that were performed show that the process of selecting these technologies is difficult due to a series of very different difficulties associated with constructing a structure in a city centre and which are sometimes hard to foresee. At the same time there is a lack of decision-making support tools dedicated to the selection of construction technologies that would take into account the problems that occur during the construction of buildings in city centres. The study shows the need to discuss the subject of developing a mathematical model and a decision-making support tool based on said model to that end.

Construction projects are characterised by complexity in the technical, organisational and environmental sphere. The organisational complexity of such projects makes it necessary to manage relationships between actors who fulfil various functions. Formal organisational structures that have been developed for this purpose do not always reflect the actual relationships between construction project participants. In literature, scholars more and more often point to the need to identify and monitor such informal relationships and attempt to manage them in order to effectively carry out projects. Structural analysis of so-called self-organising networks of relationships between project participants is carried out on the basis of established structural measures by performing Social Network Analysis (SNA). In a situation when inappropriate communication between project participants relative to management staff expectations is detected, interventions meant to improve communication in such networks are possible. The goal of the article is proposing an optimisation-oriented approach to planning such interventions while taking various constraints, such as communication costs, into consideration. As a part of this optimisation, the authors proposed a method from the heuristic methods group. This solution will support decision-making in terms of intervening within an informal relationship structure. The method was presented on the example of an actual construction project involving the construction of a complex of housing buildings. the self-organising network structure was defined on the basis of a survey carried out among the project's participants and concerned communication between them over a four-week period. As a result of the structural network analysis, abnormalities in communication between project participants were detected. The optimisation method developed by the authors pointed to possibilities of improving communication effectiveness within this network. The effects of the analysis confirmed the application potential of the method that was presented.

In the article, the authors presented the results of microbiological air quality studies in selected buildings with additional thermal insulation applied from the inside using a silicate and lime system, as well as the results of a survey study concerning the comfort of use of said buildings. The microbiological air quality studies, conducted in buildings immediately prior to and after the application of additional thermal insulation using silicate and lime sheets, demonstrated a significant decrease in the number of mould spores in interior spaces. This was also reflected in the results of a survey study. The survey study was conducted with users of public and commercial buildings and municipal housing buildings in Krakow. Thanks to the additional insulation applied from inside using the silicate and lime system, all of the utilitarian parameters of internal spaces had improved. The most significant changes concerned parameters like comfort of use, the aesthetic of the spaces and breathing comfort. According to experts, the silicate and lime system was also rated highly in terms of the analysed parameters.

Detailed studies on the effects of pulsed laser interference heating on surface characteristics and subsurface microstructure of amorphous Fe80Si11B9 alloy are reported. Laser interference heating, with relatively low pulsed laser energy (90 and 120 mJ), but with a variable number (from 50-500) of consecutive laser pulses permitted to get energy accumulation in heated areas. Such treatment allowed to form two- Dimensional micro-islands of laser-affected material periodically distributed in amorphous matrix. The crystallization process of amorphous FeSiB ribbons was studied by means of scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Detailed microstructural examination showed that the use of laser beam, resulted in development of nanostructure in the heated areas of the amorphous ribbon. The generation of nanocrystalline seed islands created by pulsed laser interference was observed. This key result may evidently give new knowledge concerning the differences in microstructure formed during the conventional and lased induced crystallization the amorphous alloys. Further experiments are needed to clarify the effect of pulsed laser interference crystallization on magnetic properties of these alloys.

Paper describes the results of Fe80Si11B9 amorphous ribbon investigation after pulsed laser interference heating and conventional annealing. As a result of interference heating periodically placed laser heated microareas were obtained. Structure characterisation by scanning and transmission electron microscopy showed in case of laser heated samples presence of crystalline nanostructure in amorphous matrix. Microscopy observations showed significant difference in material structure after laser heating – nanograin structure, and material after annealing – dendritic structure. Magnetic force microscopy investigation showed expanded magnetic structure in laser heated microareas, while amorphous matrix did not give magnetic signal. Change of magnetic properties was examined by magnetic hysteresis loop measurement, which showed that the laser heating did not have a significant influence on soft magnetic properties.

This paper investigates the fact that construction projects, due to their specificity, are complex, temporary and dynamic. Over their course, participants change, successive construction works are done and new information becomes available. This carries over to difficulties in communication. In the literature, numerous studies note the fact that a network-based approach to the analysis and monitoring of communication as a part of complex construction projects is commendable. Relations between agents, knowledge and tasks in the context of communication within a construction project can be visualized in the form of a meta-network, and suitably developed structural measures can be used to analyze them.
In this paper, the authors used meta-network theory to analyze relations between project participants, knowledge and tasks in the context of communication within a construction project, on the basis of the construction of a housing estate located in Katowice, Poland. Meta-network structural analysis allowed for a deeper understanding of these relations and the detection of essential information about the level of communication in the project under investigation, which was a basis for further discussion. The authors also stress the benefits from the approach presented and argue that it should be a starting point for effective management in the sphere of communication in construction companies.

Communication and information flowduring construction project execution is often discussed in the literature. Numerous scholars note the presence of problems with communication and information flow and highlight that these problems also affect construction project completion time and cost. The vast majority of studies on the impact of communication on construction project completion time and cost takes on a qualitative character and there is a lack of quantitative analyses of this subject. To address these deficiencies, the authors of this paper propose a quantitative approach to assessing communication between construction project participants in the aspect of its impact on said project’s completion time and cost. The authors used meta-network theory to model and analyse the problem, as it can fully depict the problem’s complexity. The method proposed allows for dynamic identification of key information flow paths between project participants, which determine its performance in an essential way. The proposed approach can support decision-makers in effective management of communication between a construction project’s participants, which has a positive carryover to achieving planned project goals. The method was tested on a real-world development project that featured the construction of a housing complex in Katowice, Poland.

HVAC systems use a substantial part of the whole energy usage of buildings. The optimizing of their operation can greatly affect the power use of a building, making them an interesting subject when trying to save energy. However, this should not affect the comfort of the people inside. Many approaches aim to optimize the operation of the heating and cooling system; in this paper, we present an approach to steer the heat pumps to reduce energy usage while aiming to maintain a certain level of comfort. For this purpose, we employ a market-based distributed method for power-balancing. To maintain the comfort level, the market-based distributed system assigns each device a cost-curve, parametrized with the current temperature of the room. This allows the cost to reflect the urgency of the HVAC operation. This approach was tested in a real-world environment: we use 10 heat pumps responsible for temperature control in 10 comparable-sized rooms. The test was performed for 3 months in summer. We limited the total peak power, and the algorithm balanced the consumption of the heat pumps with the available supply. The experiments showed that the system successfully managed to operate within the limit (lowering peak usage), and - to a certain point - reduce the cost without significantly deteriorating the working conditions of the occupants of the rooms. This test allowed us to estimate the minimal peak power requirement for the tested set-up that will still keep the room temperatures in or close to comfortable levels. The experiments show that a fully distributed market-based approach with parametrized cost functions can be used to limit peak usage while maintaining temperatures.

In the literature, researchers present construction projects as temporary self-organising coalition networks, composed of specialist entities that work towards set goals. The number of parties involved in the various processes during construction causes communications relations to be exceedingly complex and to change. The environment of a construction project is dynamic and complex, and self-organising communication networks are sensitive to institutional and social change. It becomes necessary to identify situations rooted in both insufficient communication during the carrying out of a project and its excess, which generates unnecessary cost. Effective control of information flow within self-organising communication networks through its planning and monitoring by project management can contribute to achieving project goals. This paper presents a proposal of an optimisation approach (in terms of minimising communication costs) to information flow planning that accounts for various constraints, on the example of a real-world case of building a housing complex in Poland.