The different aspects of each individual construction project such as the general conditions, design and economic restrictions as well as many more factors mean it is difficult to standardize building processes or plan in detail based on past experiences. As a result operational efficiency is often reduced, and unnecessary waste is generated. To make an organization more efficient and therefore reduce waste production everybody involved needs to appreciate and understand the improvements that can increase the organization?s efficiency. To investigate these improvements a time study was performed on two different construction sites, both of which involved buildings being constructed of prefabricated steel and concrete elements.

This thesis presents a method of making repairs in log houses. The purpose of the thesis is to use this method to exemplify crafters practical intellect. The method is based on the use of a template board to transfer the measurements onto the new log. There is a dearth of literature dealing with timber repairs, and the literature regarding using a template board for this is non-existent. The description of this method has therefore been compiled from interviews with active timber crafters.

To save energy it?s popular to build houses with low energy loss. In these houses the walls are keeping a lower temperature in the external side which leads to a higher relative humidity. In addition more material, such as wood studs, are used which means that there is more moisture to dry. More moisture in combination with higher relative humidity may pose a higher risk of microbial growth.

The different aspects of each individual construction project such as the general conditions, design and economic restrictions as well as many more factors mean it is difficult to standardize building processes or plan in detail based on past experiences. As a result operational efficiency is often reduced, and unnecessary waste is generated. To make an organization more efficient and therefore reduce waste production everybody involved needs to appreciate and understand the improvements that can increase the organization?s efficiency. To investigate these improvements a time study was performed on two different construction sites, both of which involved buildings being constructed of prefabricated steel and concrete elements.

As a result of increased energy prices more and more energy-efficient homes are coveted. An energy-efficient alternative is passive houses, which is characterized by an extremely well insulated building envelope that recovers the heat without the use of radiators or under floor heating. But a passive house requires a higher investment cost than a conventional building project, since it will require more construction materials, training of construction workers, greater land area, and long construction period. But the lower operating cost expects to pay back the higher cost of investment. We therefore question how profitable a passive house is in relation to houses built according to modern conventional building techniques.The aim of our study is to investigate the viability of passive houses compared to convent­ional houses.

Many of todays studies show that district heating is one of the betteralternatives as heating source because of its low environmental load.The energy source is often leftovers from other processes producing energy or waste, like garbage or chips.Electricity in combination with geothermal heating is another heating system that has increased sharply during the last years, and also this system decreases the discharges that have negative affectson the environment compared to several other heating methods.This report aims to, concentrated towards these two different heating systems, estimate the amounts of discharges they indirect cause and how the environment is affected.We have calculated the mean value for discharges of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, sulphur oxide and dust generated from electrical power used in Sweden.Through interviews and research we have gained data for the same substances that district heating based on combustion of garbage and biofuel generates.We have also in cooperation with a housing company chosen a building we see representative for many of the new single-family houses built in Sweden today.Based on its shape and appearance we theoretically created three alternatives of the same house, each of them with climate screens different from each other.Together with the amounts of discharged environmental affecting substances, these houses were the base for our calculations and studies when investigating the different heating sources environmental effect.The results have thereafter been analyzed and discussed from different angles..

The objective of this study was to make an inventory and a potential analysis of the organic beef production in the region of Gävleborg, Sweden. A survey was conducted, where a questionaire was sent to all farmers in the region who had environmental subsidies concerning organic cropping systems in 2001. In total, there were 701 farmers, of which 46 % participated in the study. Three slaughter houses were interviewed to get their pictures of the development of organic beef production. The study shows that there are potentials and interests in the region to increase the production of organic beef.

Recent years have been very turbulent for most private equity firms. Especially the financial meltdown in global economy has affected the industry, but also the public pressure has made private equity houses change their control strategies towards more conventional methods used in public companies. This thesis aims to put light on the control methods used in listed private equity houses which use a buyout strategy. The paper describes how the control methods change over the different phases the asset experience and how different value generating strategies use altered control methods. Using Merchant's (2003) framework for management control systems and Berg and Gottschalg's (2004) research on value generating strategies in buyouts the thesis shows that action controls as designing instructions for the board and a business plan, together with goal alignment is the commonly used control strategy directly after the acquisition.

The study aims to reduce energy consumption in apartment buildings where individual metering and charging of heat is applied. The aim is to develop planning and design for individual metering and charging in apartment buildings.The study is based on literature review, interviews and case study that include analysis of existing documents. Interviews were carried out with the property developer and the involved consultants who planned the apartment building Yasuragi. To investigate the differences the condominium association has noted in heat consumption between flats, the debit values of the heat were used to discern which houses that were furthest from the average consumption. On these flats there were temperature measurements and thermal photo shoots made for discriminating behavior and possible construction techniques which could be the explanation for the heat spread.Boverket shows that the consumption of heat can be reduced by 10-20% after insertion of individual metering and charging in an apartment block.

The scope of this investigation is to decide how and to what extent the energy consumption of apassive house is affected by the users? knowledge and habits. To achieve this a literary study hasbeen made and as a complement the planning of a passive house was completed.The result of a primary study of the rules and regulations that effect passive houses in Swedenshows that the user?s influence on passive houses is a completely unregulated area. Even thoughthere is no regulation, a need for some general knowledge of the passive house concept has beenexpressed.To further investigate how the users? knowledge and habits affect the energy consumption and ifthere is a difference between different households? energy consumption , three main factors havebeen identified.

Hydroware Elevation Technology AB sells control and regulation equipment for hydraulic elevators. The company now wants to investigate the possibility of changing their present softstarters to frequency inverters to supply power to their pump engines. They also want to investigate the possibility of future use in so called ?intelligent? houses.The purpose of this report is to investigate these possibilities..

The Energy Performance Certification in Sweden was developed as a tool to achieve the Government's target to reduce Sweden's energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020. The Energy Performance Certificate has previously received some criticism for not fulfilling its purpose. Questions that formed the basis for this report is how the energy performance certification provides support to buyers of single-family houses and if the energy performance improved in terms of reliability. The report begins with a background description that describes how the energy declaration works and some of the findings of previous evaluations and surveys. A survey to investigate the broker's position to energy performance have been conducted as well as interviews with buyers and sellers of houses. An investigation whether the energy performance can vary between different calculation programs, depending on various assumptions made by the energy declarant, has been made.Brokers and sellers have proved negative attitudes towards energy performance, particularly brokers.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the need of working instructions in Derome Träteknik ?s industrial house-building factories. Furthermore we wanted to determine an appropriate way for developing working instructions adapted to the conditions in a certain production environment. In the construction industry today prefabricated building elements are frequently used. With this come repetitive work tasks that need to be carefully planned.

The Swedish potential of electricity production from roof mounted solar panels has been determined in three steps: accessing the existing roof top areas, simulating the amount of electricity solar panels can produce on these areas and finally analyzing how large the necessary economical change is to make the solar cells profitable.The total existing amount of roof top areas are 319 square kilometers and the area distribution follows the distribution of people. This leads to an installed power of 47,9 GW which are expected to produce 49,0 TWh electricity per year. If the quality of the electricity is prioritized the highest the power is reduced to 3,7 GW, generating 3,8 TWh yearly, but if the hosting capacity is calculated from Sweden?s total electricity need, the capacity is 42 TWh per year.Today, solar panels are not profitable in Sweden for houses, even though there is a subsidy of 35 % of the investment costs, discounted in 25 years. The profitability is calculated with a cost of capital of 5 %, a price on electricity of 1 SEK/kWh and an investment cost of 20 SEK/Wp.

Granskande av ritningar, tidsplaner och kalkyler för referensprojektet Hus N i Växjö har hjälpt oss kartlägga skalväggars för- och nackdelar. Från intervjuer har vi sedan kunnat se liknelser och skillnader om vad olika yrkesfolk i samma bransch tycker, sedan därifrån dragit slutsatser. Det är inte alltid enkelt att avgöra vilken byggnadsmetod som är att föredra för att projektet ska vara kostnadseffektivt, prefabricerat eller platsbyggd. Faktorer som byggnadens konstruktion, årstid, arbetsmiljö, resurser, tid och kostnad ska ta hänsyns till.Genom att planera bättre, öka förtillverkningen, skapa en bättre samverkan mellan byggherrar, konsulter, entreprenörer, underentreprenörer och materialleverantörer, så anser man allmänt att man kan öka industrialiseringen av byggandet. Då man kan få kortare byggtider och lägre totalkostnader. .