La validazione del contenuto informativo è la chiave del successo di un processo BIM-based

The construction industry, particularly the public sector, started drawing attention towards containing costs and increasing performance. This is why several public entities worldwide are promoting new strategies and adopted innovating approaches such as the Building Information Modelling (BIM). Countries like the UK, Germany, France and Spain are working on it through investments in the industry digitalization. In Italy, despite the fact that the growing implementation of information-based technologies is not supported by a governmental strategy, public calls for tender requiring BIM have been set up. In addition, in order to benefit from a BIM-based approach, cooperating processes are being arranged to involve several parties from the very first stages of the project itself. This way flaws will be sorted out in advance and out of the construction site, and at the same time ideal solutions will be identified for the entire building lifecycle. Within the BIM methodology, a key role is played by Model Checking, which enables verification and validation of all projects, not only in the design phase, but also throughout the process phases. In order to guarantee reliable results, an initial pre-check should be carried out, the so called BIM Validation. This validates the data content of the Information Model and subsequently carries out analyses such as Clash Detection and Code Checking. The Information Model must come out of a meticulous modelling phase, in order to validate its geometric and alphanumeric content and ensure reliable results first, and then proceed with subsequent BIM-based analyses

Virtual reality engineering summer camp: a pathway to architecture, engineering, and construction

To promote paths to undergraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), a university in North California, California State University East Bay, developed the Virtual Reality Engineering Summer Camp (VRES Camp). The camp ran from July 29th to August 9th, 2019, with the goal to offer a model summer high-school camp and engage future undergraduate STEM participants as designers and developers of immersive and interactive environments (i.e., virtual reality simulations). Another goal was to promote and inspire the pursuit and ultimately increase in retention of students wanting to engage in STEM professional or undergraduate degrees by helping them acquire a wide range of knowledge and skills. Using gaming and human-computer interaction design principles, the participants were challenged to engage in fun and interactive activities. For example, the participants had to explore simulation research, talk with professionals and industry representatives, code with C# coding language, and build a virtual reality simulation using SketchUp, Unity, and Oculus Rift S. To support the building of the virtual reality simulation, the participants were introduced to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours necessary to pursue STEM degrees. In particular, the students were introduced to the engineering design process, engineering careers, and theories of multimedia learning, visualisation, virtual reality, and serious gaming. The results from an exit survey reveal a positive impact the camp had on the students. Specifically, the students indicated a strong career interest in STEM disciplines and rated their perceived success and engagement in the camp activities highly. Moreover, students’ ability to meet the camp learning objectives by developing virtual reality prototypes demonstrated that the students gained strong problem-solving and work-ready skills, which are key to their success in their advanced educational and professional careers

Enhancing Safety on Construction Sites: A UWB-Based Proximity Warning System Ensuring GDPR Compliance to Prevent Collision Hazards

Construction is known as one of the most dangerous industries in terms of worker safety. Collisions due the excessive proximity of workers to moving construction vehicles are one of the leading causes of fatal and non-fatal accidents on construction sites internationally. Proximity warning systems (PWS) have been proposed in the literature as a solution to detect the risk for collision and to alert workers and equipment operators in time to prevent collisions. Although the role of sensing technologies for situational awareness has been recognised in previous studies, several factors still need to be considered. This paper describes the design of a prototype sensor-based PWS, aimed mainly at small and medium-sized construction companies, to collect real-time data directly from construction sites and to warn workers of a potential risk of collision accidents. It considers, in an integrated manner, factors such as cost of deployment, the actual nature of a construction site as an operating environment and data protection. A low-cost, ultra-wideband (UWB)-based proximity detection system has been developed that can operate with or without fixed anchors. In addition, the PWS is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union. A privacy-by-design approach has been adopted and privacy mechanisms have been used for data protection. Future work could evaluate the PWS in real operational conditions and incorporate additional factors for its further development, such as studies on the timely interpretation of data

Next steps in BIM execution planning: a review of guides in the USA

Building information modeling implementation has brought forward the development of planning guides, or BIM Execution Plans (BEP), which support teams in identifying implementation steps and the stakeholders responsible for generating and managing information. However, numerous BEP templates that exist present a challenge when choosing the guide that can fit every need. With this study, the authors aimed at evaluating a small sample size of BEPs and suggest essential guidelines that must be followed when developing a BEP. With this early study, the authors hope to open a new avenue of research in identifying the next steps in BIM plannin

A BIM-based construction supply chain framework for monitoring progress and coordination of site activities

In spite of the growing implementation of Computer-aided technologies and Building Information Modeling (BIM) in AEC industry, building activities in construction sites are ineffectively monitored even now. Current formats of reporting and communicating the construction progress (e.g., textual progress reports, progress lines, and photographs) may not properly and quickly communicate the construction progress. In the proposed research the capability to communicate progress information right away and to share an Interactive Building Model (IBModel) are identified as the key components for successful management of the site and the supply chain network. This is carried out establishing the involved actors (Owner, Site Director, Site Safety Coordinator, Construction Companies and Suppliers) and setting them several options for the information management and visualization within the BIM environment. The monitoring system comes from the integration of the building and construction site model bestowing the visualization of site conditions on a set of graphical parametric rules, such as: chromatic visualization of building components referred to objects' completion percentage; thematic views, automatically extracted and updated, representing the real site conditions; and so forth. The monitoring system, supported by the BIM-based visualization model and managed in a Cloud computing seems to be one of the right directions for improving safety condition on one hand and site productivity and control on the other one

Unveiling the actual progress of Digital Building Permit: Getting awareness through a critical state of the art review

Growing interest is awarded to the digitalization of the building permitting use case and many works are developed about the topic. However, the subject is very complex and many aspects are usually tackled separately, making it very hard for traditional literature reviews to grasp the actual progress in the overall topic. This paper unveils the detailed state of the art in Digital Building Permitting (DBP) by critically analysing the literature by means of a set of coding tags (research progress, implementation, affected DBP workflow steps, ambitions addressed) assigned by a multidisciplinary team. The executed research shows that the mainly addressed aspects of the digitalization of building permit process are the technologies to check the compliance of design proposals against regulations, followed by the digitalization of regulations. Improvable aspects identified in the entire building permit system are instead e.g. the involvement of officers, scalability of solutions and interoperability of data, intended both as data validation and as integration of geospatial data with building models. © 2022 The Author

Assessing the impact of a construction virtual reality game on design review skills of construction student

Being able to perform an effective design review is a fundamental skill that every design or construction student should possess. Performing a design review requires critical thinking, analysis, and communication skills. To support the acquisition of these skills, this study investigated the impact of a virtual reality game, the design review simulator (DRS), in a classroom environment. To assess the impact of the game, the authors performed a crossover experiment with 120 students. The students were split into groups and were asked to perform design reviews in two treatment conditions, 2D drawings or the DRS. A knowledge test was administered at the end of different treatments to collect quantitative data on the students’ performance. Results from this research indicate that the DRS supported students in identifying a higher number of design mistakes. Furthermore, students that played with the DRS after performing 2D drawings reviews scored significantly higher in the knowledge test. The research results contribute to the growing knowledge base on the implementation of VR in the classroom and in supporting students in meeting learning objectives related to design review skills. In particular, the research illustrated that the benefits of VR found in the construction industry in terms of improved communication, user involvement, and feedback collection could be translated into the classroom environment