Jennifer Whyte

From CAD to virtual reality: modelling approaches data exchange and interactive 3D building design tools.

Virtual reality has the potential to improve visualisation of building design and construction, but its implementation in the industry has yet to reach maturity. Present day translation of building data to virtual reality is often unidirectional and unsatisfactory. Three different approaches to the creation of models are identified and described in this paper. Consideration is given to the potential of both advances in computer-aided design and the emerging standards for data exchange to facilitate an integrated use of virtual reality. Commonalities and differences between computer-aided design and virtual reality packages are reviewed, and trials of current system, are described. The trials have been conducted to explore the technical issues related to the integrated use of CAD and virtual environments within the house building sector of the construction industry and to investigate the practical use of the new technology.

Coordination and control in project‐based work: digital objects and infrastructures for delivery

A major infrastructure project is used to investigate the role of digital objects in the coordination of engineering design work. From a practice‐based perspective, research emphasizes objects as important in enabling cooperative knowledge work and knowledge sharing. The term ‘boundary object’ has become used in the analysis of mutual and reciprocal knowledge sharing around physical and digital objects. The aim is to extend this work by analysing the introduction of an extranet into the public–private partnership project used to construct a new motorway. Multiple categories of digital objects are mobilized in coordination across heterogeneous, cross‐organizational groups. The main findings are that digital objects provide mechanisms for accountability and control, as well as for mutual and reciprocal knowledge sharing; and that different types of objects are nested, forming a digital infrastructure for project delivery. Reconceptualizing boundary objects as a digital infrastructure for delivery has practical implications for management practices on large projects and for the use of digital tools, such as building information models, in construction. It provides a starting point for future research into the changing nature of digitally enabled coordination in project‐based work.

Innovation and users: virtual reality in the construction sector

Firms in the construction sector act as users of technologies produced outside the sector. This paper considers their role as users and explores their contribution to the ‘re‐innovation’ of an emerging information technology – virtual reality. An empirical study of virtual reality use within the construction sector has been conducted using the multiple case study method. Data was collected within 11 lead‐user organizations (and four suppliers) and emerging patterns of use are explored. An analytic framework is developed to investigate how two aspects of project‐based construction processes – project size and extent of design reuse – affect the technological requirements of users. Divergent requirements are found for the use of virtual reality on different types of projects and, through supplier interaction, these may lead to different families of solutions.

Structure and agency? Actor-network theory and strategic organization

use of collective categories, while avoiding a move to the opposite extreme of methodological individualism. If we follow the making of such connections (not forgetting to include those with non-humans), the organizational stories we tell – and the way in which resources, routines and capabilities feature in these stories – are likely to be different. As a way of indicating how, we identify two areas of research to which this approach can usefully contribute. In both cases, it should be emphasized that actor-network theory is most suited to the analysis of situations characterized by uncertainty, change and innovation; because it is here that new associations are being formed (and old ones abandoned) most visibly and actively. The first area of research is the strategic use of alliances and networks. This resonates with recent thinking about strategy ecology and business ecosystems (Iansiti and Levien, 2004) in its central emphasis on interdependencies between organizations. Drawing on actor-network theory, strategy researchers may find new ways of articulating success and failure in the strategic use of alliances and networks, precisely by charting how links are being forged and what sorts of actors emerge from the process (Steen and Liesch, 2006). Questions include: how do organizations approach the challenge of benefiting from alliances and networks, and why do or don’t they succeed? How does value emerge from new and diverse types of alliances and networks? What are the implications of increased participation in networks and alliances for firms as strategic actors? The formation, stabilization and harnessing of resources, routines and capabilities can be studied as a feature of specific processes of network building (e.g. how and when do these become an integral part of what makes a firm an attractive partner in an alliance?). The extent to which, through strategic management, a few actors are able to hold a heterogeneous assemblage in place, inhabit their preferred role in the network and control the way it changes over time is a question that may also be investigated empirically with this approach. The second area of research we wish to flag relates to continuous effort of (re)discovering what strategy is and what it could be. Actor-network theory suggests finding the answer to the first question by studying how strategy manifests itself in practice, how it becomes mobilized and stabilized through processes of heterogeneous association. Here we find clear resonances with the strategy-as-practice literature (Whittington, 2003), especially in so far as both approaches advocate research methods that follow practitioners in their enactment of strategy rather than sticking too rigidly to pre-established categories and definitions. However, whereas strategy-as-action puts the human strategic actor centre stage, actor-network theory propagates a further flexibility in the nature and characteristics of the actors involved. This generates the potential, both for practitioners and researchers, to define strategy in new ways by making or finding unexpected couplings and boundaries. It also provides an opportunity for reflections of a more critical nature, for example on the question of how power, influence and gain are distributed in particular types of networks and how this could be different. 308 STRATEG IC ORGANIZAT ION 4(3 )

Design quality, its measurement and management in the built environment

Imagine a world where our cities, homes and workplaces embody good design; where the built environment is convivial, improves our quality of life and adds value to our businesses. Such a vision sets a grand challenge to those responsible for designing and producing the built environment, not least because we do not have a well-developed understanding of what design quality means or how to measure it.

PERSPECTIVES ON AN INTEGRATED CONSTRUCTION PROJECT MODEL

This paper reviews the growing interest in an integrated construction project model, and examines the fundamental concept of an integrated project model by discussing the various definitions that have evolved as well as the various approaches to its development. The nature of collaborative communications that the integrated project model needs to support is also discussed, as are the enabling information and communications technologies that may have a role in the realization of the model. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the future development of the integrated construction project model.

Managing digital coordination of design: emerging hybrid practices in an institutionalized project setting

What happens when digital coordination practices are introduced into the institutionalized setting of an engineering project? This question is addressed through an interpretive study that examines how a shared digital model is used in the late design stages of a major station refurbishment project. The paper contributes by mobilizing the idea of ‘hybrid practices’ to understand the diverse patterns of activity that emerge to manage digital coordination of design. It articulates how engineering and architecture professions develop different relationships with the shared model; the design team negotiates paper-based practices across organizational boundaries and diverse practitioners probe the potential and limitations of the digital infrastructure. While different software packages and tools have become linked together into an integrated digital infrastructure, these emerging hybrid practices contrast with the interactions anticipated in practice and policy guidance and present new opportunities and challe...

Designing to compete:Lessons from Millennium Product winners

This paper draws upon six case studies of Millennium Product award winners to explore how companies use design to compete in international markets. Small manufacturing companies in the developed world are under increasing pressure to differentiate their products and services as customers are becoming more demanding and markets more international. Our case study organisations have attempted to integrate a wide range of new skills with their traditional competencies in engineering design in order to achieve competitive success. Detailed case studies provide a picture of the migration of capabilities in these small manufacturing companies towards a new types of design activities that span well beyond the traditional activities associated with engineering design.

Safe construction through design: perspectives from the site team

How does the work of designers impact on the safety of operatives at the construction site? Safety research and policy emphasize the importance of designing for safe construction, yet the interface between design and construction is poorly understood: accidents have multiple causes making it hard to establish causal links between design choices and safety outcomes. An in-depth case study of a major station project examines how professionals on the construction site perceive and manage the safety challenges of a building design. Analyses reveal understandings that, on the project studied, design has an impact on safety because of: (1) the timing of design work, where the volume of late design changes increased the difficulty of planning safe procedures, e.g. for working at height, lifting heavy items, refurbishing and demolishing old buildings; and (2) inputs from design stakeholders with insufficient practical knowledge of construction and operation required unplanned work-arounds, e.g. to coordinate different sub-systems, provide maintenance access, and manage loads during construction. These findings suggest that safety suffers where projects are under-designed, and that alongside regulation, there is a need for robust management attention to the contractual structures, incentives, processes and tools that enable clients and designers to understand material practices of construction and operation.

Beyond the computer: Changing medium from digital to physical

How can organizations use digital infrastructure to realize physical outcomes? The design and construction of London Heathrow Terminal 5 are analyzed to build new theoretical understanding of visualization and materialization practices in the transition from digital design to physical realization. In the project studied, an integrated software solution is introduced as an infrastructure for delivery. The analyses articulate the work done to maintain this digital infrastructure and also to move designs beyond the closed world of a computer to a physical reality. In changing medium, engineers use heterogeneous trials to interrogate and address the limitations of an integrated digital model. The paper explains why such trials, which involve the reconciliation of digital and physical data through parallel and iterative forms of work, provide a robust practice for realizing goals that have physical outcomes. It argues that this practice is temporally different from, and at times in conflict with, building a comprehensive dataset within the digital medium. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for organizations that use digital infrastructures in seeking to accomplish goals in digital and physical media.