Designing a novel virtual collaborative environment to support collaboration in design review meetings

Project review meetings are part of the project management process and are organised to assess progress and resolve any design conflicts to avoid delays in construction. One of the key challenges during a project review meeting is to bring the stakeholders together and use this time effectively to address design issues as quickly as possible. At present, current technology solutions based on BIM or CAD are information-centric and do not allow project teams to collectively explore the design from a range of perspectives and brainstorm ideas when design conflicts are encountered. This paper presents a system architecture that can be used to support multi-functional team collaboration more effectively during such design review meetings. The proposed architecture illustrates how information-centric BIM or CAD systems can be made human- and team-centric to enhance team communication and problem solving. An implementation of the proposed system architecture has been tested for its utility, likability and usefulness during design review meetings. The evaluation results suggest that the collaboration platform has the potential to enhance collaboration among multi-functional teams

Towards developing an industry led educational framework using LEAN approach

The poor performance and inefficient manner in which the construction industry operates has been recognised through a variety of combined government and industry initiatives over the years. A major challenge towards improvement is recognised as lying with education and industry stakeholders actively creating closer and more effective relationships to facilitate a greater mutual understanding. The application of Information Technology (IT) systems can well enhance ‘Lean’ initiatives through improving process flow, reduction of the non-added value activities, better meet customers’ requirements and adding value which will increase the performance of the industry. This paper presents a project that is focused on developing an industry led framework for educational training programmes. The outcomes of two workshops organised with the industry that have resulted in a Continued Professional Development (CPD) training framework comprising of three distinct levels in terms of strategic, operational and technology aspects of that particular key area are discussed. The essence of this work is based on adopting the ‘Lean’ approach and adding value by identifying the IT skills gaps recognised ‘by the industry’ ‘for the industry’ and addressing them in developing training programmes

Interoperability specification development for integrated BIM use in performance based design

Interoperability in BIM is low and the focus is on 3D coordination. Despite the available standards including IFC and IDM, there is still no clear guidance how such standards can be effectively used for performance based design. Thus, early collaboration is discouraged and performance analysis is conducted as late as possible to minimize the number of information exchanges, leading to difficulties and costly changes in design that is almost completed. The aim is to propose an interoperability specification development approach for performance based design through the Design4Energy case study project. Findings show that the design process had increased flexibility, shared understanding between stakeholders about what information nuggets should be provided from whom to whom, at what stage, using which tool and data model. It can guide for the integrated BIM practice and help developing BIM execution plans for Level 2 BIM while paving the way for Level 3 BIM

Can virtual workspaces enhance team communication and collaboration in design review meetings?

The development of software to facilitate collaborative working among project teams has been an active research area for the last two decades. However, the recent impetus in deploying BIM in construction has brought teamwork to the forefront and, therefore, it is important to conduct an in-depth study as to how BIM could be complemented with advances in visualisation and interaction technology to enhance team communication and collaboration. Effective tools that bring critical data and stakeholders together to solve design challenges have the potential to produce optimised solutions, reduce the number of meetings, improve communication and, consequently, delivery times. This paper explores how virtual workspaces supported with advanced visualisation and interaction techniques can enhance team communication and collaboration. It explores the type of communication channels necessary for supporting team collaboration with the use of both public and private workspaces that are essential for supporting individual and team exploration. These features are then implemented and tested using a collaborative design scenario. This research shows that the implementation of direct and indirect communication channels within virtual workspaces can significantly enhance team communication and collaboration. Furthermore, it shows that the use of a private workspace can assist individuals to contribute creatively to team activities

Exploring cross-domain data dependencies for smart homes to improve energy efficiency

Over the past decade, the idea of smart homes has been conceived as a potential solution to counter energy crises or to at least mitigate its intensive destructive consequences in the residential building sector. Smart homes have emerged as one of the applications of Internet of Things (IoT) that enabled the use of technology to automate and customize home services with reference to users’ preferences. However, the concept of smart homes is still not fully matured due to the weak handling of diverse datasets that can be exploited to promote more adaptive, personalised, and context aware capabilities. Furthermore, instead of just deploying integrated automated services in the homes, the focus should be to bring the concerns of potential stakeholders into consideration. In this paper, we have exploited the concepts of ontologies to capture all sorts of data (classes and their subclasses) that belong to one domain based on stakeholders’ requirements analysis. We have also explored their significant associations with other datasets from another domain. In addition, this research work provides an insight about what sorts of interdependencies exist between different datasets across different ontological models such as Smart homes ontology model and ICT ontology model