You have seen throughout your life that the housing prices had never fallen down, rather, it has always been on a growing slope specially in large cities. So, today we want to talk about the reasons and the ways to solve this issue and to avoid the inflationary prices. The idea is that economists are hesitant against inflation as it is an indication of a weak economic performance and a low value of money. The inconsistency that we see in the supply of housing and the rising housing prices is nonetheless relevant to the banking strategies. Throughout the history banks had tried to ease the purchase of houses for people by lending money. In the conventional format, as it's called property investment portfolio, the bank charges interest rate on the money lent; currently about 3%. This means that if you decide to buy a house at a market price of let’s say 500,000 in Sydney metro, by the end of the mortgage terms you have to pay back $515,000. Now according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the wages growth rate was about 1.8% in June 2020 which is a downward trend since 1998 from about 3% to now 1.8%. What it means is that a typical employee of the government cannot simply afford to pay back the mortgage by a margin of 1.2%.

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Today, we expand an alternative which has a better social implication in a variety of ways. Cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology are computer algorithms that prevent manipulation and fraudulent financing which are based on personal biases and preferences. Instead, by using the blockchain technology, companies and industry unions can ensure transparent financing because now it is an algorithm which acts as the middle man, well actually as a group of middle mans better to say. This also is referred to as the decentralized financing which in fact ensures a better wealth distribution across the whole society.

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Today's talk is about recycled aggregate and its economical advantages particularly for its use in concrete.  Since long a time ago, about a couple of decades now, the problem with the construction and demolition waste management had become a serious concern to both construction practitioners and environmental scientists. Conventionally, after a building is being demolished, the waste generated is ought to be landfilled. Which itself does not harm the environment as the construction materials are originally excavated from the ground, specially if you only consider concrete in this context. It is made out of sand, aggregate, cement, and water. But, the point is that by landfilling this waste stream and not recycling this actually valuable waste stream, we are going to motivate higher exploitation of natural resources which in fact is a harmful environmental activity. That being said, the industry had come to a solution to recycle the construction and demolition waste. The process starts, apparently, with the building demolition. Once the debris is made out of the old building, instead of transportation to the landfill, it now goes to the recycling plant where the crushers in the next step resize the bulks of waste in smaller scalers that can be later on used again in concrete. But, the downturn is that the new recycled product as the aggregate replacement in concrete, has a much higher porosity and inconsistency in the types of materials it is consists of i.e. it contains timber, old cement mortar, plastic, glass, etc. depending on the source of materials and the material specification of the demolished building. The higher porosity causes water absorption and thus, a higher water to cement ratio, which in technical terms is being considered as a weakness point in a concrete mix. Yet, recycled aggregate can be directly used as a subbase material in road construction without being mixed in concrete. Australia currently has standards and specifications in regards to the use of recycled aggregate as a road base material. Each state has its own unique standard codes in Australia.     

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Offsite manufacturing is the topic that we want to talk about today. A lot of benefits that come with this method of construction, mentioning a few, fast project completion, high quality and safety standards, and the given ability to build in regional areas. Now, you might ask yourself that how offsite manufacturing is advantageous in regional construction. Well, it returns to the fact that fast project delivery allows construction workers to temporarily reside in regional areas until the project is completed. The point here is that whenever the regional government decides to build new houses to accommodate the growing population, or just to increase the supply of housing and thus reduce the housing prices, then offsite manufacturing is going to be the solution. Construction workers can be outsourced from other regions depending on the availability of the required skills. There are some regions with a comparatively lower number of skilled construction workers. And that is why being able to deliver the housing projects based on offsite manufacturing becomes advantageous.

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So today we want to talk about raising capital, Initial Public Offering, and corporate social responsibility. While there are construction small businesses seeking to grow and expand their operation, many struggle to do so mainly because the current financial structure is highly regulated. In today's capitalist world, especially after the COVID hit, the economic disparities are exacerbated in a way that more than 90% of the total wealth on the planet is held by less than 3% of the population according to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report. It has two meanings for us: that either the majority of the population on earth doesn't have an understanding of what wealth even means which if true indicates that the financial dictionary is written for the minority. Or, the economic disparity can also mean that the system is actually dishonest. But today, we want to only focus on the move from private to public by the small construction entity. Conventionally it has been done by the so-called Initial Public Offering where the business entity introduces shares and asks investors to buy the companies share. The valuation process is pretty complicated and requires a rigorous assessment process. 

Ethereum ecosystem as the modern alternative addresses the problems with the conventional financial structure. 

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Today's episode is about graphene and its use, particularly, in the construction industry. These nanoparticles of carbon are made in laboratories with two distinctive quality grades. The grade that is made through the so-called chemical vapor deposition yields the highest quality for applications in the electronic industry often and the process is pretty expensive especially when you consider the production rate and the energy consumption. Noteworthy, when we are talking about the quality of graphene, we are actually referring to the size of platelets and the number of carbon layers. Higher quality essentially means larger platelets and thinner layers. Whereas, the other cheaper method which yields a lower quality of graphene is called electrochemical exfoliation where graphite sticks or chunks, depending on your supply are gone under acid attack with a specified concentration and input voltage. As we are dealing with huge volumes of concrete in the construction industry, and cost-effectiveness is always key to successful project delivery, this method of graphene production is being considered as the more suitable way.  

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With all its positive implications, there are of course some downturns to this technology too. The psychological and social threats that VR imposes on its users is one of the negative aspects of this technology. If this technology gains wide attraction, humans will no longer need to take long commutes to the job site which is good by itself but it has a serious negative consequence that is the loss in the necessity of daily physical activity. You no longer need to move your body, do the hard labour, and burn calories which are good for your health. Healthy use of VR must be limited to a certain number of hours in a day to avoid such mental health issues. It is a highly addictive technology and the users must become aware of the consequences of long working hours with VR.

Dr. Roggiero Lovreglio from Massey University, New Zealand, had done some tremendous research on this topic. He has some of the brightest minds in his team and they are open to the so-called "industry partnership". So, I do highly recommend you to contact him if you are thinking of creating a VR application for your construction business. 

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In this episode, we talk about one of the largest chemical producers in the construction industry, Sika, that is also operating privately in Australia as well. This private operation of Sika in Australia simply means that they have not listed their business in the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). Sika is a swiss multinational company that has over 25,000 employees, subsidiaries in more than 100 countries, and an annual sales turnover of AUD 11.7 billion. 

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In this episode, we talk about one of the other multinational construction companies that are operating in Australia although on a relatively smaller scale than compared to Lendlease. You might want to ask yourself that why is it even important to know these firms? Well, the answer is that these construction firms with their billion-dollar worth of capital circulating within the construction industry are setting the future direction for you by their corporate power. Small businesses to survive must trigger the direction of cash flow and these highly capitalized public firms are showing their future path in their annual reports so that we will be able to point to the right direction. I know so many of my good friends that are concreting as their daily trade and you must listen to them constantly nagging about the low-profit margin. That's why education is so important and we are trying to show you the best economical ways to run your construction business here at the institute. So, anyway, for us to remain relevant, we need to know the future direction of large construction companies so that we will be able to sail in the direction of the wind. 

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James Hardie is a global building materials company and the largest global manufacturer of fiber cement products. Headquartered in Ireland, it is listed in two of the major stock exchanges in Australia and the US with a 17.17B dollar market cap. It was first established in Australia in 1888. In the beginning years, It had become famous for manufacturing and distributing building products containing asbestos. Around 1980 as it's been proved that asbestos caused severe human diseases, James Hardie had adopted a new asbestos-free fiber cement that contains wood fibers instead. 

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