Virtual reality-based cloud BIM platform for integrated AEC projects

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has demonstrated the need for integrating collaborative design teams’ “project data”, to not only help coordinate the design, engineering, fabrication, construction, and maintenance of various trades, but also facilitate project integration and interchange. Numerous potential benefits have inspired several countries to consider the implications of implementing BIM Level 3 (Cloud) as an innovative way of further enhancing the design, management and delivery process, ergo - a paradigm shift towards Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). Amongst the myriad of the available innovative approaches, web-based platforms are particularly beneficial for integrating visualisation components to give continuous sharing of relevant information for geographically dispersed end users. This study presents a game environment supported by a web-based Virtual Reality cloud platform for integrated AEC projects. This paper further explains the adapted Unified-Software-Development-Process of specifying this cloud computing platform, which employed iterative phases of Elaboration, Construction and Transition. This study presents new understanding and insight into the causal drivers and influences associated with successful decision-making design in non-collocated design teams. Research findings form a stepping-stone for developing new relationship models in collaborative environments, particularly gaming interfaces

Design Creativity: Future Directions for Integrated Visualisation

The Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sectors are facing unprecedented challenges, not just with increased complexity of projects per se, but design-related integration. This requires stakeholders to radically re-think their existing business models (and thinking that underpins them), but also the technological challenges and skills required to deliver these projects. Whilst opponents will no doubt cite that this is nothing new as the sector as a whole has always had to respond to change; the counter to this is that design ‘creativity’ is now much more dependent on integration from day one. Given this, collaborative processes embedded in Building Information Modelling (BIM) models have been proffered as a panacea solution to embrace this change and deliver streamlined integration. The veracity of design teams’ “project data” is increasingly becoming paramount - not only for the coordination of design, processes, engineering services, fabrication, construction, and maintenance; but more importantly, facilitate ‘true’ project integration and interchange – the actualisation of which will require firm consensus and commitment. This Special Issue envisions some of these issues, challenges and opportunities (from a future landscape perspective), by highlighting a raft of concomitant factors, which include: technological challenges, design visualisation and integration, future digital tools, new and anticipated operating environments, and training requirements needed to deliver these aspirations. A fundamental part of this Special Issue’s ‘call’ was to capture best practice in order to demonstrate how design, visualisation and delivery processes (and technologies) affect the finished product viz: design outcome, design procedures, production methodologies and construction implementation. In this respect, the use of virtual environments are now particularly effective at supporting the design and delivery processes. In summary therefore, this Special Issue presents nine papers from leading scholars, industry and contemporaries. These papers provide an eclectic (but cognate) representation of AEC design visualisation and integration; which not only uncovers new insight and understanding of these challenges and solutions, but also provides new theoretical and practice signposts for future research

A review of cloud-based bim technology in the construction sector

Cloud computing technology is regarded as a major transformational force that is causing unprecedented change across the communication and business disciplines. In the architecture, engineering and construction sector, cloud-BIM integration is considered to be the second generation of building information management (BIM) development, and is expected to produce another wave of change across the construction industry. Despite this, few studies to date have attempted to summarise the research literature on cloud-BIM. This paper explores the literature to identify the substantive work on cloud-BIM, particularly regarding building life cycle management, to provide valuable insight for practitioners and to propose avenues for further research. Thirty academic sources, including refereed journal articles and conference papers, were retrieved and analysed in terms of their research focus and nature of application. The review revealed that most cloud-BIM research has focused on the building planning/design and construction stages. The findings suggest that more research should be directed towards operation, maintenance and facility management, energy efficiency and the demolition and deconstruction stages of building life cycle management. Further empirical research on organisational and legal issues, including security, responsibility, liability and model ownership, of the cloud-BIM model is also needed

CONSTRUCTION EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS FOR ACHIEVING LEVEL 2 AND 3 BIM

The Architecture Engineering Construction (AEC) Industry is well noted for its fragmented nature, leading to several flaws in communication and information processing, which have led to a proliferation of adversarial relationships amongst project participants, thereby affecting the integrity of design information throughout the project life cycle. Likewise, Construction Education is bedevilled by multitudinous issues due to its practice-based, interdisciplinary nature of the industry, its professional and institutional history, and its evolving context and composition. These challenges have influenced the purpose of construction as well as the requirements or strategies needed to achieve it. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of Construction Education and learning requirements for successful training and implementation of Level 2 (with the aid of a process map) and also of Level 3, to meeting the ever-changing nature of the AEC industry. This process map seeks to identify the educational requirements for existing industry practitioners and for fresh graduates entering into the industry. In order to achieve this aim, a case study methodology was adopted using semi-structured interviews with BIM experts in purposively selected organisations in the UK, which were further analysed using single case narrative and cross-case synthesis techniques. The BIM sub-processes at each project phase of the construction process were extracted from the interviews conducted. Then the process map linking all the BIM activities in the project was developed. In conclusion, the process map formalises the knowledge and skills set required to successfully implement Level 2 and 3 BIM, facilitating project collaboration, communication flow and agreement amongst project participants on construction processes throughout the project lifecycle. The finding of this research are highly aligned with the seminal literature which argued that new skills required for the creation and management of a BIM model fall into the three categories of technological tools, organisational processes, and project team roles and responsibilities, and that these three skill sets contribute to the success of the entire BIM project and adoption in any organisation

Supporting decision-making in the building life-cycle using linked building data

The interoperability challenge is a long-standing challenge in the domain of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC). Diverse approaches have already been presented for addressing this challenge. This article will look into the possibility of addressing the interoperability challenge in the building life-cycle with a linked data approach. An outline is given of how linked data technologies tend to be deployed, thereby working towards a “more holistic” perspective on the building, or towards a large-scale web of “linked building data”. From this overview, and the associated use case scenarios, we conclude that the interoperability challenge cannot be “solved” using linked data technologies, but that it can be addressed. In other words, information exchange and management can be improved, but a pragmatic usage of technologies is still required in practice. Finally, we give an initial outline of some anticipated use cases in the building life-cycle in which the usage of linked data technologies may generate advantages over existing technologies and methods

Scientometric analysis of BIM-based research in construction engineering and management

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the latest research of BIM adoption in construction engineering and management (CEM) and propose research directions for future scholarly work. During the recent decade, building information modeling (BIM) has gained increasing applications and research interest in the construction industry. Although there have been review-based studies that summarized BIM-based research in the overall architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) area, there is limited review that evaluates the current stage of BIM-based research specifically in the CEM sub-area. Design/methodology/approach CEM falls into the scope of AEC. It involves construction-related tasks, activities and processes (e.g. scheduling and cost estimates), issues (e.g. constructability), as well as human factors (e.g. collaboration). This study adopted a holistic literature review approach that incorporates bibliometric search and scientometric analysis. A total of 276 articles related to BIM applied in CEM were selected from Scopus as the literature sample for the scientometric analysis. Findings Some key CEM research areas (e.g. CEM pedagogy, integrated project delivery, lean and off-site construction) were identified and evaluated. Research trends in these areas were identified, and analyses were carried out with regard to how they could be integrated with BIM. For example, BIM, as a data repository for ACE facilities, has substantial potential to be integrated with a variety of other digital technologies, project delivery methods and innovative construction techniques throughout the whole process of CEM. Practical implications As BIM is one of the key technologies and digital platforms to improve the construction productivity and collaboration, it is important for industry practitioners to be updated of the latest movement and progress of the academic research. The industry, academics and governmental authorities should work with joint effort to fill the gap by first recognizing the current needs, limitations and trends of applying BIM in the construction industry. For example, it needs more understanding about how to address technical interoperability issues and how to introduce the integrated design and construction delivery approach for BIM implementation under the UK BIM Level 2/3 framework. This study contributed to the body of knowledge in BIM by proposing a framework leading to research directions including the differences of BIM effects between design-bid-build and other fast-track project delivery methods; the integration of BIM with off-site construction; and BIM pedagogy in CEM. It also addressed the need to investigate the similarities and differences between academia and industry toward perceiving the movement of BIM in construction field work

BIM implementation in architectural practices : towards advanced collaborative approaches based on digital technologies

We are at a stage where Building Information Modelling (BIM) has reached a maturity level to be widely adopted by the professionals and organizations within the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. An industry which is highly fragmented and not advanced in terms of digitalization, making an effective collaboration hard to achieve. The advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have brought about the promise of improving collaborative procedure in a wide range of industries. The widespread adoption of BIM has paved the way for the introduction of ICT within the AEC sector. The reported benefits of BIM imply on its potential for contributing to a successful inter-disciplinary collaboration. This calls for attention from architects who shall consider how BIM allows the architectural practices to operate in truly novel ways to achieve new building efficiencies and organizations. This research was designed to investigate the crucial factors for an effective collaboration based on advanced ICT and enabled by BIM with respect to architectural practices. An effective inter-disciplinary collaboration allows architects as the authors of the projects to oversee the development and delivery of the projects more consistently with their design intends. The concerns about the move towards adopting BIM by architectural firms were reviewed and its influential factors and barriers were discussed. As we read about it, BIM is indicated by different terms to describe its essence: ‘’BIM methodology’’, ‘’BIM technology’’, ‘’BIM process’’, ‘’BIM systems’’ and etc. However, none of these terms can include all aspects of BIM. The term ‘’ecosystem’’ was adopted to describe the nature of BIM and the reason for which is described in this work. To further constitute the BIM ecosystem, its dimensions of People, Products and Processes were presented in detail with respect to collaborative procedures. It included the delineation of a number of BIM policies and protocols, tools and technologies, roles and skills which are all related to and suitable for architectural practices in their interdisciplinary collaboration. Through three case studies, the research questions and hypothesis were put into investigation. Based on the idea of change management and the socio-technical nature of BIM collaboration, a qualitative research approach was adopted. Various techniques were used to gather information to be analyzed through a coding process of the qualitative data. The codes were interpreted as the factors influencing collaboration and were grouped to form the crucial concepts contributing to effective BIM-enabled collaborative procedures. It was revealed that the “joint decision making” factor is the most crucial one in this respect followed by “collaboration involvement” and “interoperability”. These findings were based on the frequency of the codes related to these factors in the data analysis. The crucial concepts in BIM-enabled collaboration were revealed to be “collaboration conditions” followed by “software capacity” and “human resources organization”. The findings confirm the research hypotheses that BIM implementation asks architects to assume a leadership role in collaborative procedures and that it allows for the integration of ICT into the technological pipeline of architectural practices. However, the validity of the two hypotheses is subject to certain conditions that are discussed in this work. The research finds the area of BIM education a place of great interest for future research work as the factor of “training” has a great influence on the overall success of BIM-enabled collaboration. Furthermore, it was revealed that the crucial factor of “interoperability” needs more attention from both industry and academic sectors. The impacts of BIM implementation on existing and emerging roles within the industry is another area of great interest for future works and research.Estamos en una etapa en la que Building Information Modeling (BIM) ha alcanzado un nivel de madurez que será ampliamente adoptado por el Profesionales y organizaciones dentro de la industria de Arquitectura, Ingeniería y Construcción (AIC). Una industria que es altamente fragmentado y no avanzado en términos de digitalización, lo que hace que una colaboración efectiva sea difícil de lograr. Los avances en las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC) han traído la promesa de mejorar la colaboración Procedimiento en una amplia gama de industrias. La adopción generalizada de BIM ha allanado el camino para la introducción de las TIC en el sector de la AIC. Los beneficios reportados de BIM implican en su potencial para contribuir a un éxito interdisciplinario colaboración. Esto requiere la atención de arquitectos que deben considerar cómo BIM permite que las prácticas arquitectónicas operen en formas verdaderamente novedosas para lograr nuevas eficiencias de construcción y organizaciones. Esta investigación fue diseñada para investigar los factores cruciales para una colaboración efectiva basada en TIC avanzadas y habilitado por BIM con respecto a las prácticas arquitectónicas. Una colaboración interdisciplinaria efectiva permite a los arquitectos como autores de los proyectos para supervisar el desarrollo y la entrega de los proyectos de manera más coherente con sus propósitos de diseño. Se revisaron las preocupaciones sobre el movimiento hacia la adopción de BIM por parte de las empresas de arquitectura y sus factores influyentes y Se discutieron las barreras. A medida que leemos sobre esto, BIM se indica mediante diferentes términos para describir su esencia: "metodología BIM", "Tecnología BIM", "Proceso BIM", "Sistemas BIM" y etc. Sin embargo, ninguno de estos términos puede incluir todos los aspectos de BIM. El término "ecosistema" se adoptó para describir la naturaleza de BIM y la razón por la cual se describe en este trabajo. A más constituyen el ecosistema BIM, sus dimensiones de Personas, Productos y Procesos se presentaron en detalle con respecto a procedimientos colaborativos. Incluía la delineación de una serie de políticas y protocolos BIM, herramientas y tecnologías, roles y habilidades que están relacionadas y son adecuadas para las prácticas arquitectónicas en su colaboración interdisciplinaria. A través de tres estudios de caso, las preguntas de investigación y la hipótesis se pusieron en investigación. Basado en la idea de cambio. La gestión y la naturaleza sociotécnica de la colaboración BIM, se adoptó un enfoque de investigación cualitativa. Varios se utilizaron técnicas para recopilar información para analizarla a través de un proceso de codificación de los datos cualitativos. Los codigos fueron interpretados como los factores que influyen en la colaboración y se agruparon para formar los conceptos cruciales que contribuyen a la eficacia procedimientos colaborativos habilitados por BIM. Se reveló que el factor de "toma de decisiones conjunta" es el más crucial en este sespeto seguido de "participación colaborativa" e "interoperabilidad". Estos hallazgos se basaron en la frecuencia de códigos relacionados con estos factores en el análisis de datos. Los conceptos cruciales en la colaboración habilitada por BIM se revelaron como "Condiciones de colaboración" seguidas de "capacidad de software" y "organización de recursos humanos". Los hallazgos confirman la investigar las hipótesis de que la implementación BIM les pide a los arquitectos que asuman un papel de liderazgo en los procedimientos de colaboración y que permite la integración de las TIC en la línea tecnológica de las prácticas arquitectónicas. La investigación considera que el área de educación BIM es un lugar de gran interés para futuros trabajos de investigación, ya que el factor de "capacitación" tiene un gran influencia en el éxito generalPostprint (published version

Virtual reality-integrated workflow in BIM-enabled projects collaboration and design review: a case study

A successful project delivery based on building information modeling (BIM) methods is interdependent on an efficient collaboration. This relies mainly on the visualization of a BIM model, which can appear on different mediums. Visualization on mediums such as computer screens, lack some degrees of immersion which may prevent the full utilization of the model. Another problem with conventional collaboration methods such as BIM-Big room, is the need of physical presence of participants in a room. Virtual Reality as the most immersive medium for visualizing a model, has the promise to become a regular part of construction industry. The virtual presence of collaborators in a VR environment, eliminates the need of their physical presence. Simulation of on-site task can address a number of issues during construction, such as feasibility of operations. As consumer VR tools have recently been available in the market, little research has been done on their actual employment in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) practices. This paper investigates the application of a VR based workflow in a real project. The authors collaborated with a software company to evaluate some of their advanced VR software features, such as simulation of an on-site task. A case study of VR integrated collaboration workflow serves as an example of how firms can overcome the challenge of benefiting this new technology. A group of AEC professionals involved in a project were invited to take part in the experiment, utilizing their actual project BIM models. The results of the feedbacks from the experiment confirmed the supposed benefits of a VR collaboration method. Although the participants of the study were from a wide range of disciplines, they could find benefits of the technology in their practice. It also resulted that an experimental method of clash detection via simulation, could actually be practical. The simulation of on-site tasks and perception of architectural spaces in a 1:1 scale are assets unique to VR application in AEC practices. Nevertheless, the study shows the investment in new hardware and software, and resistant against adoption of new technologies are main obstacles of its wide adoption. Further works in computer industry is required to make these technologies more affordable.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Exploration of Building Information Modeling and Integrated Project Cloud Service in early architectural design stages

[EN] In the evolving Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Integrated Project Cloud Service (IPCS) has become crucial. These tools are particularly essential during the early design stages, as they enable comprehensive management and integration of project information, thus promoting effective decision-making throughout project lifecycles. This combined approach enhances inter-organizational collaborations, improves design and construction practices, and creates a communal data platform for stakeholders. This research explores the effectiveness of the BIM-IPCS system in streamlining data exchange and information flow during early design, suggesting ways to minimize errors, speed up processes, and reduce construction costs through dependable networks. Conclusively, this study underscores the significant impact of the BIM-IPCS system on project management, ensuring well-coordinated and informed construction while advocating for its role in driving innovative and efficient project delivery in the AEC industry.Grateful acknowledgment is extended to the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, the Public Works Information Institute of the Republic of China (CPWEIA), and Luxor Digital Co., Ltd. (LUXOR) for their substantial support and contributions to this research.Wagiri, F.; Shih, S.; Harsono, K.; Cheng, T.; Lu, M. (2023). Exploration of Building Information Modeling and Integrated Project Cloud Service in early architectural design stages. VITRUVIO - International Journal of Architectural Technology and Sustainability. 8(2):26-37. https://doi.org/10.4995/vitruvio-ijats.2023.2045326378