Mark Shelbourn

Planning and implementation of effective collaboration in construction projects

Purpose – The twenty‐first century is now seen as the time for the construction industry to embrace new ways of working if it is to continue to be competitive and meet the needs of its ever demanding clients. Collaborative working is considered by many to be essential if design and construction teams are to consider the whole lifecycle of the construction process. Much of the recent work undertaken on collaborative working has focused on the delivery of technological solutions with a focus on web (extranets), CAD (visualisation), and knowledge management technologies. However, it is now recognised that good collaboration does not result from the implementation of information technology solutions alone, the organisational and people issues, which are not readily solved by pure technical systems, need also to be resolved. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – Work discussed in this paper brings together the benefits provided by technology, with organisational issues, and people...

Multimedia in construction education: new dimensions

The use of multimedia for educational purposes has generated considerable discussion in recent years. This paper discusses a number of different ways in which multimedia can be used in the construction industry. Learning from other industries, particularly manufacturing is essential as multimedia has been explored and exploited by such industries. The first half of the paper demonstrates how multimedia can be used to aid learning and training in the construction sector and in disseminating research results to an industrial audience. The second part demonstrates how multimedia can be used as an interface to complex integrated database systems using virtual reality (VR) technologies. These can be used in a laboratory environment to train industrialists and students to use integrated systems, a topic of great importance and traditionally known to be difficult to understand. The work presented here builds upon research undertaken at the University of Salford in the UK through the use of case studies and findings generated from workshops attended by industrial collaborators who are interested in improving the ways in which information is delivered in the construction sector through multimedia capabilities.

Legal and Contractual Framework for the VO

This chapter describes the legal and contractual considerations for organisations wishing to use ICT in their virtual organisation. The chapter describes a number of legal and contractual conditions, (mainly contracts), that must be met to enable legal and contractually valid transactions amongst the VO participants. These contracts and how to achieve them using software tools is described. These tools enable organisations to send electronic transactions in a secure and legally valid manner using technology that is readily available and easy to use. How this can be achieved is described. Bringing all this information together the chapter concludes with a small case study where a description of how these tools have been used in the VO environment is given.

Learning building pathology using computers – evaluation of a prototype application

Building surveying employers are requiring graduates with a high level of cognitive and experiential skills to enable them to survey buildings directly after graduation with little or no supervision.This has led to a change in thinking for educators as providing this type of graduate requires learning and training material that is time‐consuming and costly to provide, as it requires learners to be actively involved in real surveying tasks. This paper presents the results of a prototype application developed to enable inexperienced surveyors to learn building pathology without leaving their desktops.

Collaborative working - the elusive vision

Abstract This paper reviews progress towards achieving effective collaborative working in the construction sector. Vision statements published in 1998, 2000 and 2006, which anticipate the envisioned future scenarios in 2010 and 2020, respectively, are examined. The characteristics of these desirable futures are then compared with the current realities as evidenced by seven outline case studies and by the findings of two recent surveys. A considerable gap is identified between the compelling and desirable future visions and current practice. Some of the complex factors responsible for the significant shortfall are identified and discussed. The paper concludes with some recommendations for addressing the shortfall.

Learning building pathology using computers – a prototype application

Building defects are notoriously difficult to identify, even by the most experienced surveyor. Traditional training methods of identifying defects in buildings involved the physical visiting of a property. This has become more difficult as insurance and organisational issues have made this practice unsafe and costly. Methods of training surveyors can be brought up to date with the introduction of desktop technology to provide learners with a rich set of learning resources in a much easier format. Defects generated from real life cases using digital cameras are stored in a format that can be transformed into QuickTime VR movies and then used to train inexperienced surveyors. This paper describes a prototype application using case‐based‐reasoning virtual reality and multimedia authoring technologies. The architecture of the system is described and some details of the methodology used are discussed. An iterative approach is used to develop the system and validate it.

Designing a computer-aided-learning application using multimedia to train inexperienced building surveyors in building pathology

Computer aided/assisted learning (CAL) systems aim to provide learners with both a rich set of learning resources and tools to help them navigate through such structures. The advent of high quality graphics and multimedia has enabled learning styles that were previously impractical to be developed and supported by state of the art CAL systems. This paper concentrates on how multimedia can be used as a computer-aided-learning medium in training inexperienced surveyors in building pathology.