BASIC TERMINOLOGY

Civil engineering means the art of construction or science or the constructional doctrine. Building engineering is often confused with word architecture, although building engineering concerns mainly to structures while architecture predominantly deals with a form.

Building construction is the production sector, which is focused to survey, design and construction work, as well as renovation and maintenance of buildings and the final results are the finished buildings.

Architecture is, in the narrower sense, a building art that produces works that, in their shape and space, correspond to the practical purpose and the ideological requirements of the times, and the individual building that appears to be the architectural design. In the widest contemporary conception, architecture also includes the formation of the entire environment by artistic means in connection with available scientific knowledge.

The construction is a summary of supplies of building materials, materials, parts and works, often machines, equipment used to create a work on the basis of relevant documentation, and is generally firmly connected to the ground.

Building structures can be defined as structures, whose larger part is located on the earth's surface. The ground structures include buildings for housing, civic buildings (health care buildings, school buildings, sports buildings, cultural buildings, services and trade, construction sites for transport, administrative buildings, ...), industrial (production halls, workshops, warehouses, etc.) and agricultural buildings (stables, haymakers, greenhouses, ...).

Building object is spatially coherent or technically individual purpose-built part of the construction. The most common form of a building object is a building, a bridge or a road.

The building is a set of building structures creating a spatial structure. The building structure must fulfill the required function.

Due to the limited physical and moral life of the buildings, besides realization of production and non-production buildings, another task is also maintenance, modernization and reconstruction of the buildings:

• Maintenance reduces the degree of degradation of structural elements, usually involves the renewal of protective surface coating.
• Modernization is an increase in the utility value of a building or its part without changing the purpose. The goal is to improve the standard of use.
• Reconstruction is to restore an object or its part into the original condition with the utmost emphasis on preserving the original appearance and design solution.

The basic objective of the building activity is to create a quality environment for the purpose for which the object is designed, while the quality should be ensured for the entire expected life of the building.

Basic requirements for building construction:

• Architectural requirements:
  • Urbanistic requirements: Requirements for the structure and development of municipalities, intensity of land use and location of buildings.
  • Operational Requirements: Disposition (typological) requirements, divided and interconnected spaces, communication links.
  • Aesthetic requirements: Shaping of the whole and its parts, color solution, monument care.
• General requirements for building safety and use:
  • Mechanical resistance and stability
  • Fire safety
  • Health protection of persons, animals and healthy living conditions and the environment
  • Protection against noise and vibrations
  • Building safety
  • Energy saving and thermal protection
• Resistance to external influences
• Requirements for the well-being and quality of the indoor environment
• Technology requirements
• Economic requirements
• Environmental requirements

Modular coordination or dimensional unification ensures consistency between the dimensions of the building and its building components. This is a set of rules for determining the compositional dimensions of objects and elements. Basic rules for modular co-ordination of dimensions in construction are laid down in ČSN 73 005 (1990).

The module, labelled M, is the agreed length unit used to determine and coordinate dimensions in construction. Depending on the spatial layout, the ground module and the height module are distinguished.

The basic (metric) module in the construction is equal to M = 100 mm. Until 1960, a 150 mm module was used. In accordance with EU regulations, the 125 mm module can also be used.

The derived modules are multiples or fractions of the base module:

• The enlarged module (200, 300, 500, 3000 and 6000 mm) is used as ground plan dimensions, ie the distance of walls, columns, pillars, etc.
• The reduced module (50, 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1 mm) is used, for example, for coordinate dimensions of the cross-section of building elements (columns, walls, beams, boards, etc.). Values of 20 mm or less are used to determine thicknesses of thin-walled elements.

The composability is a property of spatial parts of objects that allow them to be sorted, assembled, and deployed without the need to change or adapt their dimensions and shape. The dimensions of the construction elements must allow their mutual assembly to the larger assemblies.

• The coordinate (dimensional) dimension of the element is the dimension that the element occupies theoretically in the modular space network of the structure, i.e. including the relevant part of the joint, eg burnt bricks 150 x 75 x 300 mm.
• The basic dimension (formerly production dimension) of the elements is the size prescribed for the element production, assuming a zero tolerance. The basic dimension of the element is smaller than the composite dimensional dimension, eg burnt bricks 140 x 65 x 290 mm.

Prescribed basic (production) dimensions are technically impossible to always observe. The actual dimensions of the manufactured elements may differ from the prescribed basic (production) dimensions by the tolerance allowed (deviation).

TYPIFICATION AND PREFABRICATION IN CONSTRUCTION

Typification is a process aimed at selecting a limited number of system building elements and technologies. Its goal is to reduce recurrent solutions, accelerate and increase the economic efficiency of construction. Typification is the unification of dimensions in the construction industry. Typification is used for individual elements or for whole objects:

• Elemental typification includes the manufacture of individual building components, such as ceiling panels windows, all of which are then assembled structures. The condition for their reusability is compliance coordination module dimensions.
• Object typification involves the complex solution of whole building structures or parts thereof, eg apartment buildings. The advantage of volume typing is the economy of construction. The disadvantage is uniformity and low variability.

Dimension unification allows universal use of the same elements mass-produced for different purposes.

Prefabrication is the production of structural components or parts thereof outside the site of their use (site). The individual prefabricated pieces are then brought to the construction site from the factory and the actual construction of the rough construction takes the form of assembly of the individual part