Nm Bouchlaghem

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.

Optimising the design of building envelopes for thermal performance

Computer models for the simulation of the thermal performance of buildings have been in existence for many decades. Although these programs save a great deal of time and effort in computational terms they still rely on designers intuition and experience to achieve optimum solutions for a design problem. This paper presents a computer model which, not only simulates the thermal performance of the building taking into account design variables related to the buildings envelope and fabric, but also applies numerical optimization techniques to automatically determine the optimum design variables, which achieve the best thermal comfort conditions. The main optimization program is supported by a graphical model for the design of window shading devices, which uses the numerical coefficients that define the window shading to model shading devices taking into account seasonal variations in solar angles and solar gains. The rationale and methodology used to develop the models is outlined and the resulting programs are described with examples of outputs. Finally, it is concluded that the models offer a valuable decision support system for designers at an early design state for the optimization of the passive thermal performance achieving optimum thermal comfort and savings in heating and cooling energy.

A Knowledge Transfer Framework: the PFI context

The UKs Private Finance Initiative market is predicted to rise to over £8 billion a year and there are indications of growing opportunities. PFI creates a long‐term income stream and provides valuable opportunities for portfolio diversification. PFI has evolved at a fast pace and the momentum is set to continue. However, there are major challenges facing construction organisations. These include the lack of PFI experts, longer negotiation periods and tight time schedules to deliver large‐scale schemes, high levels of investment and risks involved and limited knowledge transfer between PFI projects. Concerns over the level of knowledge sharing have prompted the development and evaluation of a Knowledge Transfer Framework that encourages construction organisations to transfer PFI knowledge between projects. It achieves this by building on a questionnaire survey of PFI clients and construction companies, case studies of companies involved in PFI, and research workshops to validate the framework developed.

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...

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.

Using the semantic web for project information management

Purpose – This paper has the purpose of exploring the use of the semantic web to support project information management. It aims to discuss the development of a semantic web based framework for shared definitions of terms, resources and relationships within a construction project. These can be used to help and support intelligent collaboration.Design/methodology/approach – The paper explores the scope of using the semantic web to manage information management processes in the construction industry. It develops the hypothesis that information can be managed using appropriate tools and techniques and develops a roadmap that shows the way in which a solution can be achieved.Findings – The discussion provides information on the technology that can be used to manage construction project information and the development of ontology is provided in detail.Originality/value – The paper makes an original contribution of exploring an area (information management tools and techniques) that is at the forefront of discu...

BUILDING SUPPLY CHAIN COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS : A REVIEW OF METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

With the increasing importance of computer-based communication technologies, communication networks are becoming crucial in supply chain management. Given the objectives of the supply chain, supply chain management is situated at the intersection of different professional sectors, each of them with its own vocabulary, its own knowledge and rules. This paper provides a review of the main approaches to supply chain communications through the analysis of different ways of modelling a supply chain and the presentation of new semantic-based approaches that have been and are being developed to improve the quality of the information exchanges within the supply chain.

Computer Imagery and Visualization in Built Environment Education: The CAL-Visual Approach

UK higher education institutions have invested significantly in the implementation of communication and information technology (CIT) in teaching, learning and assessment - with mixed results. This work investigated the use of multimedia technologies in the form of digital imagery and visualization material to improve student knowledge and understanding. In this context, this paper reports on a major UK initiative (CAL-Visual) funded by the Higher Education Funding Council as part of the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme looking at improving the use of images for teaching and learning in built environment education. It first describes ways in which computer-aided learning (CAL) is being used in civil and building engineering curricula, it then presents the main aims and objectives of the project and describes the design and implementation of the CAL-Visual system. It concludes by reporting on the results of an evaluation conducted using case studies relating to different applications.

Towards the understanding of the requirements of a communication language to support process interoperation in cross-disciplinary supply chains

Many manufacturing organizations while doing business either directly or indirectly with other industrial sectors often encounter interoperability problems among software systems. This increases the business cost and reduces the efficiency. Research communities are exploring ways to reduce this cost. Incompatibility amongst the syntaxes and the semantics of the languages of application systems is the most common cause to this problem. The process specification language (PSL), an ISO standard (18629), has the potential to overcome some of these difficulties by acting as a neutral communication language. The current paper has therefore focused on exploring this aspect of the PSL within a cross-disciplinary supply chain environment.  The paper explores a specific cross-disciplinary supply chain scenario in order to understand the mechanisms of communications within the system. Interoperability of processes supporting those communications are analysed against PSL. A strategy is proposed for sharing process information amongst the supply chain nodes using the ‘PSL 20 questions wizard and it is concluded that, although there is a need to develop more effective methods for mapping systems to PSL, it can still be seen as a powerful tool to aid the communications between processes in the supply chain. The paper uses a supply chain scenario that cuts across the construction and manufacturing business sectors in order to provide a breadth to the types of disciplines involved in communication.

Planning and estimating in practice and the use of integrated computer models

Abstract Research into IT applications in the construction industry has been going on for many years, most of this work took the form of system development aimed at assisting construction practitioners and aimed at improving processes in order to reduce the cost of building. Most of these developments tended to identify a problem in a sector of theindustry and focused on using a certain technology in IT to provide a solution. This was often done without a proper investigation into the suitability and the acceptability of the technology to the end users (construction practitioners). Furthermore, most of the work was too focused on solving problems in isolation and did not consider the overall organisational framework and structure of the industry. This paper discusses and presents the results of a survey conducted to investigate the planning and estimating work practices in the industry in order to establish the important issues for the development of an integrated planning and estimating computer model. The survey established the important issues for the acceptability of computer models, the technical aspect to be addressed and a better working practice for estimating and planning. The technical aspect on which the computer model was based is the optimisation of the time and cost of building and the best work practice used is the integration of estimating and planning.