Gj Ger Maas

A social capital perspective to innovation management in construction

State-of-the-art products commonly outperform construction products that are used in day to day building practice. Also construction products appear to have a diffusion curve that differs from consumer products, slower at first, more rapid later. The social capital theory helps us to understand why certain actors are able to get their ideas adopted and why others do not. Aim of this paper is to explore to what extend social capital theory may provide explanations for the way in which innovative construction products are diffused. Therefore social capital literature and building process literature are compared. Construction process literature shows that the industry is fragmented and contacts between the various professional networks is limited to that in the building projects. Even more so the contact in construction projects appears to be short-term oriented. Social capital literature provides an explanation (network closure) for both opportunistic behavior in construction projects as well as lack of reward for those who put in extra effort when adopting an innovation. Also social capital literature shows that those who are able to bridge the gaps between networks (structural holes) are able to get their ideas adopted more easily and so are able to spread their innovations more rapidly. Social capital theory thus appears to be helpful to explain how the diffusion of building product innovation can be improved

Product Modeling for Dimensional Control in the Building Industry

Construction planning is an indispensable bridge between the phase of building design and the phase of building construction. Among others, the dimensional control plan is one important part of the construction plan. To ensure the predefined dimensional quality, the dimensional control plan must provide site personnel with information on, among others, setting out and assembling building components, which often can be done by means of total stations. The complexity of designing such a plan asks for the support of information technology. This article presents the initial results of integrating product modeling with knowledge-based engineering to support designing the dimensional control plan.

The Implementation of BIM in a Large European Construction Company

Background: Information Technology (IT) has reached a level of maturity, where IT can really meet the complexity of the construction industry. IT has reached the ability to support construction not just any more in the facilitating processes as financial services and human resources management (HR), but also to play a key role in the primary process due to the development of the building information modeling (BIM). However, implementation of BIM in a company is still an challenging exercise. Purpose of this paper: The development of an implementation strategy based on the needs of project support. Method: Desk research gives insights in the roles and phases in a project, levels of hierarchy in a company and two case studies in two large European construction companies deliver insight in the actual situation. Results & Discussion: The complexity of BIM implementation will be presented in a clear analysis of BIM for the different roles, activities, phases of an building project. Moreover a BIM implementation approach will be presented useful for small and large construction companies.

Mechanising, Robotising and Automating Construction Processes

Building objects are produced by people who perform the necessary tasks using equipment. On the basis of preconditions, the process designer can have a particular task performed by a specific combination of a worker and equipment. The worker performs a number of tasks and the equipment does the rest. Nowadays, newer, more suitable technologies are becoming available. In order to use these technologies successfully, it is essential to have a good understanding of the work processes of an object that is to be built. The terms mechanising, robotising and automating are defined in order to be able to describe the physical, cognitive and organising tasks in relation to the possible use of human-machine technologies. It sometimes makes more sense to redesign the building products to achieve a more effective and efficient building process using workers and additional tools or machines. Mechanising, robotising and automating construction processes is necessary in order to reduce production times and costs, improve working conditions, avoid dangerous work, allow work to be performed that people cannot do and increase performance. For the construction industry, more and more human-machine technologies are becoming available, but their use does not automatically lead to more effective and efficient construction processes. Building expertise is the domain of the professional builder and not of the process engineers who look to apply the technologies in the construction industry. The implicit know-how of the builders and construction process designers regarding the execution of construction processes has to be made explicit. The builder’s implicit know-how comprises knowing how to choose the sequence of the building elements, how to join the elements, where the elements fit in the construction as a whole and how they have to be positioned. This chapter contains a systematic definition of the terms mechanising, robotising and automating and explains an analysis method with which a worker-equipment system that produces better performance can be designed.

Construction waste generation due to the design phase

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MANAGING PERFORMANCE BASED BUILDING OF SMART HOMES

Smart homes are considered a vital technology in an aging society as they compensate for a shortage in care workers. However, often smart homes do not perform well. Performance management is well known in the manufacturing industry but not common in the building industry. The performance approach is the practice of thinking and working in terms of ends rather than means. It is concerned with what a building or a building product is required to do, and not with prescribing how it is to be constructed. Performance based building (PBB) includes amongst others functional briefing and performance assessments. However, an overview of tasks in PBB is lacking and the principle has not yet been applied to smart homes. Aim of this research is to contribute to performance management in the construction of health smart homes by identifying tasks and proposing a task assignment. Tasks are identified by studying the extended reporting of the Performance Based Building Network (PeBBu). In conclusion we may say that PBB of health smart homes primarily differs from traditional building in the way tasks are performed. PBB demands that the client does not design (specify how to build) but restricts himself to specifying why he wants and why he wants it. PBB also demands that the designers and contractors are selected on both price and capabilities. Besides these alterations in how tasks are performed merely two tasks are added. These are the verification of the realized design and the monitoring of performance of the building in use.

The Development of nD CAD

The development of Virtual Design and Construction solutions needs a targetand vision-oriented approach at three levels: international, national and company. This paper provides an overview of both international and typically Dutch initiatives and how they influence developments at company level. As might be expected, it is challenging to match target-and vision-oriented developments. The following questions will be addressed: What are the business drivers? Are these drivers attainable at the company level? What are the technological opportunities and barriers? How are competitive edges defined, and what are the common goals, means and developments at these three levels? Are activities at these levels related from a company perspective? What results can be expected within the next three years?

Fluorine Profile Distortion upon Annealing by the Presence of a CVD Grown Boron Box

We provide experimental evidence of the distortion of a F profile by the presence of a CVD grown B box. After annealing, a depletion in the F profile is observed fitting the position of the immobile part of B profile. To study this phenomenon further experiments were designed and atomistic simulations were done using a recently developed F model. In this model F complexes with both Si interstitials (F‐I) and vacancies (F‐V) are included. The formation of Boron‐Interstitial Clusters is found to reduce the local Si interstitials defect concentration. This feature may be responsible for the reported F distortion by the presence of a B box.

Automation and Robotisation in Construction and Transition Management

number of problems in the construction industry could be solved with the aid of automation and robotisation technologies. There are indications that automation and robotisation processes are similar to transition processes. Recent years have seen a good deal of research into these kinds of often complex processes and how to manage them. This knowledge may provide the inspiration required to solve the problems in the construction industry through an increase in the exchange of available (tacit) knowledge. This paper looks at this issue at the level of multidisciplinary, collaborative expert designers. II. PROBLEMS The problems today in the building industry are that the client and society do not get the value they want. Clients are users, investors, owners, lessors and producers of real estate objects. Their values are profitability, usability, flexibility and quality. Society wants to save energy and avoid waste and pollution. • Some problems underlying those mentioned above may be: • A lack of specific working methods for expert designers to work with one another and with clients. • A lack of suitable competences of the client and expert designers that enable them to work with one another.

Value Creation by Automation and Robotics in Construction: An Introduction

In the decades to come, building production will concentrate in the metropolitan centres of the world due to the migration of the world’s population to the major cities. An improvement of the construction process in densely populated inner cities will be the task of the future. This focuses on performance management, construction engineering and construction management. New developments being discussed in this field are new design strategies, human machine technologies, employee safety, progress monitoring, distributed production information and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).