Guidelines and Opinion Survey of the Design, Production and Installation of Exterior Architectural Panels Made of Precast Concrete

This research provided the inspection guidelines as specified by the PCI Handbook, conducted the opinion surveys from people involved in the process of design, production and installation of exterior architectural panels made of precast concrete, and gave useful feedback on the construction of exterior architectural panels. This research developed 3 sets of questionnaires to collect the data about the work of exterior architectural panels directly from involved people including designers, manufacturers and installers. Each set of questionnaires consisted of two parts: Part 1 was the basic information of the respondents, and Part 2 was about design considerations (Set 1), manufacturing (Set 2), and installation (Set 3) of exterior architectural panels. According to the survey results for the opinion of exterior architectural panels as specified by the PCI manual, designers had a high significant level of consideration (x-bar = 4.08, SD = 0.69), manufacturers had the highest level of consideration (x-bar = 4.36, SD = 0.47) and the installers had the highest level of consideration (x-bar = 4.25, SD = 0.57). Additionally, this research also provided feedback for designers, manufacturers and installers who have largely ignored in design, production and installation by considering the lowest score in the last 4-5 places of survey results. Involved people should be more consideration on the design, manufacturing and installation process to obtain the quality exterior architectural panels