Yusuf Arayici

Roadmap for implementation of BIM in the UK construction industry

Purpose – Building information modelling (BIM) implementation is a major change management task, involving diversity of risk areas. The identification of the challenges and barriers is therefore an imperative precondition of this change process. This paper aims to diagnose UKs construction industry to develop a clear understanding about BIM adoption and to form an imperative step of consolidating collective movements towards wider BIM implementation and to provide strategies and recommendations for the UK construction industry for BIM implementation.Design/methodology/approach – Through comprehensive literature review, the paper initially establishes BIM maturity concept, which paves the way for the analysis via qualitative and quantitative methods: interviews are carried out with high profile organisations in Finland to gauge the best practice before combining the results with the analysis of survey questionnaire amongst the major contractors in the UK.Findings – The results are established in the form ...

BIM adoption and implementation for architectural practices

Purpose – This paper aims to present a systematic approach for building information modelling (BIM) implementation for architectural SMEs at the organizational levelDesign/methodology/approach – The research is undertaken through a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) project between the University of Salford and John McCall Architects (JMA) a SME based in Liverpool. The overall aim of the KTP is to develop lean design practice through BIM adoption. The BIM implementation approach uses a socio‐technical view, which does not only consider the implementation of technology but also considers the socio‐cultural environment that provides the context for its implementation. The action research oriented qualitative and quantitative research is used for discovery, comparison, and experimentation as it provides “learning by doing”.Findings – The strategic approach to BIM adoption incorporated people, process and technology equally and led to capacity building through the improvements in process, technological infr...

Digital Construction through BIM Systems will Drive the Re-engineering of Construction Business Practices

The construction industry has been facing a paradigm shift to (i) increase; productivity, efficiency, infrastructure value, quality and sustainability, (ii) reduce; lifecycle costs, lead times and duplications, via effective collaboration and communication of stakeholders in construction projects. Digital construction is a political initiative to address low productivity in the sector. This seeks to integrate processes throughout the entire lifecycle by utilising building information modelling (BIM) systems. The focus is to create and reuse consistent digital information by the stakeholders throughout the lifecycle. However, implementation and use of BIM systems requires dramatic changes in the current business practices, bring new challenges for stakeholders e.g., the emerging knowledge and skill gap. This paper reviews and discusses the status of implementation of the BIM systems around the globe and their implications to the industry. Moreover, based on the lessons learnt, it will provide a guide to tackle these challenges and to facilitate successful transition towards utilizing BIM systems in construction projects.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) for Facilities Management (FM): The Mediacity Case Study Approach

Facilities Management (FM) as the total management of all services supports the core businesses of an organisation in a building. However, today’s buildings are increasingly sophisticated and the need for information to operate and maintain them is vital. Facility Managers have to acquire, integrate, edit, and update diverse facility information ranging from building elements, fabric data, operational costs, contract types, room allocation, logistics, maintenance, etc. However, FM professionals face challenges resulting in cost and time related productivity, efficiency and effectiveness losses. Building Information Modelling (BIM), that seeks to integrate the building lifecycle, can provide improvements and help to overcome those challenges. Thus, the paper explores how BIM can contribute to and improve the FM profession. It uses the MediaCityUK project as a case study, which is a regeneration project aiming to attract media institutions locally and worldwide and establish itself as an international centre for excellence. For this purpose, the key FM tasks are identified and a BIM model for the new university building in MediaCityUK is developed and experimented with the FM tasks by a group of FM experts. As a result, the paper explains how BIM can support FM tasks in an itemised manner.

Computer Integrated Construction: An Approach to Requirements Engineering

Purpose – This paper aims at proposing a process of requirements engineering for the human centred, adaptive computer integrated construction systems development through industry wide information sharing.Design/methodology/approach – The research strategy is based on case study research methodology. The EU‐funded DIVERCITY project was analysed. This project was undertaken by a European consortium of researchers and practitioners from the construction industry. They developed a virtual environment that enables the industry to undertake collaboratively the client briefing and design reviews and the construction stages.Findings – DIVERCITYs requirements engineering approach has the potential to provide opportunities for research to determine the appropriate requirements engineering techniques for the development of the systems and their effective implementation in the construction industry.Originality/value – The main contribution of the research is the construction of the requirements engineering process f...

Requirements Engineering for Innovative Integrated ICT Systems for the Construction Industry

Collaborative working using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) systems in construction has become a reality as many activities are performed globally with actors located in various geographical locations. Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) is the type of ICT system that binds a fragmented and geographically distributed set of construction stakeholders collaborating together. Although the concept of CIC has been the subject of research for many years, its uptake has been very limited due to the development of the technology and its effective implementation. Research in this area is still premature and does not pay much attention to the development and implementation of the prototypes in the industry. As a result, the research developments have remained as prototypes although they have captured industrial interest. However, ongoing research within the field of construction IT is stressing that it is crucial to define research methodologies for human centred and adaptive CIC developments th...

Requirements Engineering for Computer Integrated Environments in Construction

A Computer Integrated Environment (CIE) is the type of innovative integrated information system that helps to reduce fragmentation and enables the stakeholders to collaborate together in business. Researchers have observed that the concept of CIE has been the subject of research for many years but the uptake of this technology has been very limited because of the development of the technology and its effective implementation. Although CIE is very much valued by both industrialists and academics, the answers to the question of how to develop and how to implement it are still not clear. The industrialists and researchers conveyed that networking, collaboration, information sharing and communication will become popular and critical issues in the future, which can be managed through CIE systems. In order for successful development of the technology, successful delivery, and effective implementation of user and industry-oriented CIE systems, requirements engineering seems a key parameter. Therefore, through experiences and lessons learnt in various case studies of CIE systems developments, this book explains the development of a requirements engineering framework specific to the CIE system. The requirements engineering process that has been developed in the research is targeted at computer integrated environments with a particular interest in the construction industry as the implementation field. The key features of the requirements engineering framework are the following: (1) ready-to-use, (2) simple, (3) domain specific, (4) adaptable and (5) systematic, (6) integrated with the legacy systems. The method has three key constructs: i) techniques for requirements development, which includes the requirement elicitation, requirements analysis/modelling and requirements validation, ii) requirements documentation and iii) facilitating the requirements management. It focuses on system development methodologies for the human driven ICT solutions that provide communication, collaboration, information sharing and exchange through computer integrated environments for professionals situated in discrete locations but working in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary environment. The overview for each chapter of the book is as follows; Chapter 1 provides an overview by setting the scene and presents the issues involved in requirements engineering and CIE (Computer Integrated Environments). Furthermore, it makes an introduction to the necessity for requirements engineering for CIE system development, experiences and lessons learnt cumulatively from CIE systems developments that the authors have been involved in, and the process of the development of an ideal requirements engineering framework for CIE systems development, based on the experiences and lessons learnt from the multi-case studies. Chapter 2 aims at building up contextual knowledge to acquire a deeper understanding of the topic area. This includes a detailed definition of the requirements engineering discipline and the importance and principles of requirements engineering and its process. In addition, state of the art techniques and approaches, including contextual design approach, the use case modelling, and the agile requirements engineering processes, are explained to provide contextual knowledge and understanding about requirements engineering to the readers. After building contextual knowledge and understanding about requirements engineering in chapter 2, chapter 3 attempts to identify a scope and contextual knowledge and understanding about computer integrated environments and Building Information Modelling (BIM). In doing so, previous experiences of the authors about systems developments for computer integrated environments are explained in detail as the CIE/BIM case studies. In the light of contextual knowledge gained about requirements engineering in chapter 2, in order to realize the critical necessity of requirements engineering to combine technology, process and people issues in the right balance, chapter 4 will critically evaluate the requirements engineering activities of CIE systems developments that are explained in chapter 3. Furthermore, to support the necessity of requirements engineering for human centred CIE systems development, the findings from semi-structured interviews are shown in a concept map that is also explained in this chapter. In chapter 5, requirements engineering is investigated from different angles to pick up the key issues from discrete research studies and practice such as traceability through process and product modelling, goal-oriented requirements engineering, the essential and incidental complexities in requirements models, the measurability of quality requirements, the fundamentals of requirements engineering, identifying and involving the stakeholders, reconciling software requirements and system architectures and barriers to the industrial uptake of requirements engineering. In addition, a comprehensive research study measuring the success of requirements engineering processes through a set of evaluation criteria is introduced. Finally, the key issues and the criteria are comparatively analyzed and evaluated in order to match each other and confirm the validity of the criteria for the evaluation and assessment of the requirements engineering implementation in the CIE case study projects in chapter 7 and the key issues will be used in chapter 9 to support the CMM (Capability Maturity Model) for acceptance and wider implications of the requirements engineering framework to be proposed in chapter 8. Chapter 6 explains and particularly focuses on how the requirements engineering activities in the case study projects were handled by highlighting strengths and weaknesses. This will also include the experiences and lessons learnt from these system development practices. The findings from these developments will also be utilized to support the justification of the necessity of a requirements engineering framework for the CIE systems developments. In particular, the following are addressed. • common and shared understanding in requirements engineering efforts, • continuous improvement, • outputs of requirement engineering • reflections and the critical analysis of the requirements engineering approaches in these practices. The premise of chapter 7 is to evaluate and assess the requirements engineering approaches in the CIE case study developments from multiple viewpoints in order to find out the strengths and the weaknesses in these requirements engineering processes. This evaluation will be mainly based on the set of criteria developed by the researchers and developers in the requirements engineering community in order to measure the success rate of the requirements engineering techniques after their implementation in the various system development projects. This set of criteria has already been introduced in chapter 5. This critical assessment includes conducting a questionnaire based survey and descriptive statistical analysis. In chapter 8, the requirements engineering techniques tested in the CIE case study developments are composed and compiled into a requirements engineering process in the light of the strengths and the weaknesses identified in the previous chapter through benchmarking with a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to ensure that it has the required level of maturity for implementation in the CIE systems developments. As a result of this chapter, a framework for a generic requirements engineering process for CIE systems development will be proposed. In chapter 9, the authors will discuss the acceptance and the wider implications of the proposed framework of requirements engineering process using the CMM from chapter 8 and the key issues from chapter 5. Chapter 10 is the concluding chapter and it summarizes the findings and brings the book to a close with recommendations for the implementation of the Proposed RE framework and also prescribes a guideline as a way forward for better implementation of requirements engineering for successful developments of the CIE systems in the future.

How to identify housing bubbles? A Decision Support Model

The purpose of this paper is to provide a decision support model for the early diagnosis of housing bubbles in the UK during the maturity process of the phenomenon.,The development process of the model is divided into four stages. These stages are driven by the normal distribution theorem coupled with the case study approach. The application of normal distribution theory is allowed through the usage of several parametric tools. The case studies tested in this research include the last two UK housing bubbles, 1986 to 1989 and 2001/2002 to 2007. The central hypothesis of the model is that during housing bubbles, all speculative activities of market participants follow an approximate synchronisation, and therefore, an irrational, synchronous and periodic increase on a wide range of relevant variables must occur to anticipate the bubble component. An empirical application of the model is conducted on UK housing market data over the period of 1983-2011.,The new approach successfully identifies the well-known UK historical bubble episodes over the period of 1983-2011. The study further determines that for uncovering housing bubbles in the UK, house price changes have the same weight with the debt–burden ratio when their velocity is positive. Finally, the application of this model has led us to conclude that the model’s outputs fluctuate approximately in line with phases of the UK real estate cycle.,This paper proposes a new measure for studying the presence of housing bubbles. This measure is not simply an ex post detection technique but dating algorithms that use data only up to the point of analysis for an on-going bubble assessment, giving an early warning diagnostic that can assist market participants and regulators in market monitoring.

Producing 3D Applications for Urban Planning by Integrating 3D Scanned Building Data with Geo-spatial Data

Visual Information Systems for urban planning can be produced in a variety of ways. In this paper we give an account of research into integrating scanned data with urban data sets to produce 3D applications that span built environment spatial scales from building elements to the whole city. In our research, 3D laser scanner is used to capture 3D building models as a way of developing visual 3D presentations. In order to use 3D building models for urban environment, relevant standards are reviewed and the integration of 3D building models with urban scaled geo-spatial data are explored. In the recent EU-funded IntelCities(2004-2005) and Virtual Environment Planning System (VEPS, 2004-2008) research projects, the authors have worked on capturing an existing building in digital form and using 3D data in building refurbishment projects and visualisation of urban environment in planning consultation. The paper introduces the ways of producing 3D applications using integrated data from 3D scanning with geo-spatial datasets. The IntelCities application shows an application for building features survey such as windows and doors, and holistic review of the building’s surroundings regarding historical building refurbishment. The application developed in the VEPS demonstrates the potential of delivering web-based integrated consultation services using 2D/3D visualisation. This can be useful to achieve holistic analysis in urban planning projects.

A System Engineering Perspective to Knowledge Transfer: A Case Study Approach of BIM Adoption

© 2012 Arayici and Coates, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A System Engineering Perspective to Knowledge Transfer: A Case Study Approach of BIM Adoption