Stephen C.W. Kong

Virtual experiment of innovative construction operations

The planning of construction operations is a complicated activity involving abstraction of construction activities from the drawings, choosing of suitable plants and falseworks, allocation of resources on site, planning of safe working place for labourers, and the scheduling of activities sequence. The increasing competition among contractors demands them to adopt innovative construction methods, which have not been used or tested previously. It is not until the beginning of actual construction that the construction planner can realize the validity of his construction operations planning. The lack of tools for the construction planner to evaluate and validate his planning can result in incorrect construction plans, which cause a lot of rework in the construction phase. Virtual Reality (VR) technology, on the other hand, is very likely to provide a solution to the above problem. VR system generates virtual environment containing objects with real world properties and allows user/planner to interact with the objects. This paper proposes an integrated VR system that generates near to reality construction environment for the construction planner to perform construction activities in a real world manner in order to plan, evaluate and validate the construction operations.

Broadband services for residential and commercial tenants : a categorisation of current and future services and a survey on tenants needs in Sweden

Abstract The world is going through a rapid development of Internet and network-related technologies. The Swedish governments vision is, for example, that all private persons, firms and organisations have broadband in the speed of five megabit per second before 2005. Such developments mean that the market for the construction industry will expand. Most large and medium size contractors in Sweden work with drawing cables for broadband. Most companies in real estate offer or plan to offer broadband services to their tenants. The trend is that the technologies and the suppliers drive the development of broadband, not customers and the customers’ needs. In this paper a global scanning of current and future services, delivered by broadband, which can be used in computer networks of the type local community system (LCS) developed by NCC and Ericsson is presented. Twenty-eight types of services are identified and are categorised in five major groups; information services, communication services, entertainment services, e-commerce services and telemetry services. In collaboration with NCC customers’ needs on broadband services were investigated in a case study, Sundby Park. A questionnaire based on the types of services identified was sent to 144 residential tenants and 42 commercial tenants in the area. The study indicates that residential tenants are most interested in information services while commercial tenants are most interested in communication services. In total, the interest for broadband services is lower than expected. The reason could either be that the industries overestimate the tenants needs for broadband services or that the respondents do not have enough knowledge yet to fully understand the services.

Construction virtual prototyping: a survey of use

Purpose –The introduction of Building Information Model tools over the last 20 years is resulting in radical changes in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction industry. One of these changes concerns the use of Virtual Prototyping - an advanced technology integrating BIM with realistic graphical simulations. Construction Virtual Prototyping (CVP) has now been developed and implemented on ten real construction projects in Hong Kong in the past three years. This paper reports on a survey aimed at establishing the effects of adopting this new technology and obtaining recommendations for future development. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey was conducted in 2007 of 28 key participants involved in four major Hong Kong construction projects – these projects being chosen because the CVP approach was used in more than one stage in each project. In addition, several interviews were conducted with the project manager, planning manager and project engineer of an individual project. Findings –All the respondents and interviewees gave a positive response to the CVP approach, with the most useful software functions considered to be those relating to visualisation and communication. The CVP approach was thought to improve the collaboration efficiency of the main contractor and sub-contractors by approximately 30 percent, and with a concomitant 30 to 50 percent reduction in meeting time. The most important benefits of CPV in the construction planning stage are the improved accuracy of process planning and shorter planning times, while improved fieldwork instruction and reducing rework occur in the construction implementation stage. Although project teams are hesitant to attribute the use of CVP directly to any specific time savings, it was also acknowledged that the workload of project planners is decreased. Suggestions for further development of the approach include incorporation of automatic scheduling and advanced assembly study. Originality/value –Whilst the research, development and implementation of CVP is relatively new in the construction industry, it is clear from the applications and feedback to date that the approach provides considerable added value to the organisation and management of construction projects.

An analytic knowledge network process for construction entrepreneurship education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative multicriteria decision‐making approach to knowledge management in construction entrepreneurship education by means of an analytic knowledge network process (KANP).Design/methodology/approach – The KANP approach in the study integrates a standard industrial classification with the analytic network process (ANP). For the construction entrepreneurship education, a decision‐making model named KANP.CEEM is built to apply the KANP method in the evaluation of teaching cases to facilitate the case method, which is widely adopted in entrepreneurship education at business schools.Findings – The study finds that there are eight clusters and 178 nodes in the KANP.CEEM model, and experimental research on the evaluation of teaching cases discloses that the KANP method is effective in conducting knowledge management to the entrepreneurship education.Research limitations/implications – As an experimental research, this paper ignores the concordance between ...

A knowledge‐driven management approach to environmental‐conscious construction

This paper aims to introduce a knowledge‐based managemental prototype entitled E+ for environmental‐conscious construction relied on an integration of current environmental management tools in construction area. The overall objective of developing the E+ prototype is to facilitate selectively reusing the retrievable knowledge in construction engineering and management areas assembled from previous projects for the best practice in environmental‐conscious construction. The methodologies adopted in previous and ongoing research related to the development of the E+ belong to the operations research area and the information technology area, including literature review, questionnaire survey and interview, statistical analysis, system analysis and development, experimental research and simulation, and so on. The content presented in this paper includes an advanced E+ prototype, a comprehensive review of environmental management tools integrated to the E+ prototype, and an experimental case study of the implementation of the E+ prototype. It is expected that the adoption and implementation of the E+ prototype can effectively facilitate contractors to improve their environmental performance in the lifecycle of projectbased construction and to reduce adverse environmental impacts due to the deployment of various engineering and management processes at each construction stage.

An Internet‐based electronic product catalogue of construction materials

As the potential of the Internet is gradually realized and its importance progressively recognized, waves of companies are now trying to utilize this new means of commerce by conducting business online and offering their products for cyber‐exchanges. Suppliers in the construction industry, coming to understand the advantages of e‐commerce, have also begun putting their product catalogues online. However, before suppliers can truly benefit from e‐commerce, a comprehensive and user‐friendly electronic product catalogue must be developed so that buyers can easily navigate through e‐markets to find what they need. This paper attempts to review problems of existing electronic product catalogues on construction material websites and presents an electronic product catalogue designed to facilitate easy searching, comparing and evaluating of construction materials.

A Qualitative Evaluation of Implementing Virtual Prototyping in Construction

The use of 3D computer-aided design (CAD) models to support construction project planning has been increasing in the previous year. 3D CAD models reveal more planning ideas by visually showing the construction site environment in different stages of the construction process. Using 3D CAD models together with scheduling software to prepare construction plan can identify errors in process sequence and spatial arrangement, which is vital to the success of a construction project. A number of 4D (3D plus time) CAD tools has been developed and utilized in different construction projects due to the awareness of their importance. Virtual prototyping extends the idea of 4D CAD by integrating more features for simulating real construction process. Virtual prototyping originates from the manufacturing industry where production of products such as cars and airplanes are virtually simulated in computer before they are built in the factory. Virtual prototyping integrates 3D CAD, simulation engine, analysis tools (like structural analysis and collision detection), and knowledgebase to streamline the whole product design and production process. In this paper, we present the application of a virtual prototyping software which has been used in a few construction projects in Hong Kong to support construction project planning. Specifically, the paper presents an implementation of virtual prototyping in a residential building project in Hong Kong. The applicability, difficulties and benefits of construction virtual prototyping are examined based on this project.

Optimization of curved roof surface design using GA

Purpose – Due to the increasing complexity of curved roof surface design and the inadequate optimisation algorithms in design software, the optimisation of curved roof surface design needs to be studied further. The purpose of this paper is to develop an alternative approach to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of curved roof surface design of buildings.Design/methodology/approach – To achieve the purpose, an optimisation method/tool is developed through reviewing the application of CATIA and integrating genetic algorithm with CATIA; and the effectiveness to perform the GA‐based optimisation method is demonstrated by using a real‐life case study. Furthermore, a comparison among different optimisation algorithms currently available in the CATIA system is conducted.Findings – Through the case study and the comparison, it is found that the GA‐based method can improve the performance of optimisation for curved roof surface design in the CATIA system; however, further research work is required for the b...