Business process implications of e-commerce in construction organisations

The need for construction to change its traditional working practices has been repeatedly expressed in government, industry, and academic publications. The Internet has been a major catalyst for change in most industry sectors, including the construction sector. The implementation of Internet-based technologies, such as ecommerce for achieving business targets, bring about changes in an organisation, its current practices, systems, processes and workflows. It is therefore important to evaluate the business process implications of adopting e-commerce in construction organisations. This was the focus of this study. The early stages of the research established the possible benefits, barriers, and drivers for the adoption of e-commerce technologies within construction. This was done by conducting an industry-wide survey that explored attitudes, current usage, barriers and enablers of IT and e-commerce within the UK construction sector. Survey results indicated that the exact benefits of using e-commerce within the construction industry were not known and more needed to be done to establish the effects of incorporating e-commerce applications into construction business processes and to demonstrate the opportunities of e-commerce for construction. To address this need a typical business process model that used the principles of business process re-engineering and demonstrated opportunities for e-commerce, was developed. Using this model it was possible to illustrate how, with the use of ecommerce applications, different members of the construction supply chain could derive business benefits and overcome traditional process inefficiencies. In order to effectively adopt e-commerce technologies in construction, companies may have to reengineer their current working methods, which could lead to a step change in current work practices. To facilitate such a step change it was essential to study and document the impact of specific e-commerce applications on their current end-user business processes. Case studies were conducted for this purpose. The case study findings showed that the end-user companies had accrued several business benefits from using e-commerce tools. Issues related to management buy-in and organisational culture were the main barriers to the wider use of e-commerce within the construction industry. The case studies and earlier findings indicated that e-commerce is ‘here to stay’ and it will not be long before it becomes an industry norm. Taking this into account, construction companies who are currently using, and those who have yet to use, e-commerce tools need to take measures to successfully adopt and benefit from these tools. It is important for companies that seek to adopt ecommerce to assess their ‘e-readiness’ for adopting e-commerce tools to ensure a productive and beneficial implementation of these tools. To address this need an ereadiness model for construction organisations and a prototype application, VERDICT, that assess e-readiness were developed and implemented. The model is based on the premise that for any company to be e-ready, its management, people, process and technology have to be e-ready in order to derive maximum business benefits. The research findings indicate that the use of e-commerce is still in its infancy within the construction industry. The current use of e-commerce has resulted in process automation, however, there is no evidence of process re-engineering. Such practices, although beneficial in the short-term, can have long-term implications in that the end-users are not necessarily making full use of the technology and hence not deriving full benefits from it. The model and e-readiness assessment prototype developed as part of this study will enable construction organisations to successfully adopt e-commerce and exploit its potential

Disseminating project learning in contracting firms

The construction industry is highly competitive with its clients demanding continuous improvement and highly innovative construction projects that are delivered to key performance indicators such as less time, reduced costs, high quality and fewer accidents. Capturing and disseminating lessons learned is one way of fostering project learning which in turn can contribute positively to continuous improvement. This paper proposes a roadmap that can foster project learning by addressing the challenges of capturing useful lessons learned and disseminating these in an effective manner. The data collection was done in three stages. Firstly a questionnaire survey was sent to the top 122 UK construction contractors to understand current lessons learned practices; this included what the processes were, why they were used, how they were carried out, their usefulness and the perceived barriers to dissemination. Secondly, nine interviews were undertaken to gain a more detailed understanding of companies’ lessons learned practices and the challenges experienced. The interviewees consisted of individuals based in the head offices of construction contractor organisations with responsibility for lessons learned practices. These respondents therefore provided the corporate view of what the organisations did. Thirdly, three focus group interviews where held with site based project teams. This provided a comparison between the corporate views and what happened on construction sites. The roadmap proposed addresses the needs of both corporate and site teams for (1) identifying what is relevant, (2) the processes that should be adopted, (3) the content and format of lessons learned, (4) the types of repositories, (5) the dissemination mechanisms and (6) the feedback loops. Each of these stages is accompanied by checklists to provide examples of typical tools

3DIR: three-dimensional information retrieval from 3D building information modelling environments.

More and more information is being packed into Building Information Models (BIMs), with the 3D geometrical model serving as the central index to lead users to the many other types of building information. The Three-Dimensional Information Retrieval (3DIR) project investigates information retrieval from such environments, where information or documents are linked to a 3D artefact. In these situations, the 3D visualisation or 3D geometry of the building can be exploited when formulating information retrieval queries, computing the relevance of information items to the query, or visualising search results. Following reviews of literature in BIM/CAD and information retrieval, a clear gap was identified in the practice of information retrieval from BIM/CAD systems. End users were consulted to ascertain the precise user requirements in such an information retrieval system. Scenario-based design was adopted to design a software prototype. The 3DIR system was developed as an add-in under the Autodesk Revit BIM platform. The 3DIR prototype creates an index of all text data attached to the 3D model. The user is able to search for information by selecting specific 3D objects, by keyword and by specifying particular 3D regions of the model. Relationships between 3D objects are also used to rank search results. Search results are displayed by highlighting 3D objects in the 3D model. Findings from the evaluation of the prototype demonstrate its usefulness but suggest directions for future development. It is concluded that a tight coupling between text-based retrieval and the 3D model is extremely effective in 3D BIM environments

BIM-enabled “Digital by Default” vision for fire safety

In England and Wales, building regulations apply to the design and construction of new buildings, extensions and changes of use. Regulation 38 (BRE, 2019) is a requirement to provide fire safety information to the responsible person at the completion of a project, or where the building or extension is first occupied. Regulations require as-built Fire Safety Information to be handed over by the design and construction teams to the responsible person to maintain and operate a building with reasonable safety. The responsible person is the owner, occupier, or manager of the building. The information would typically include; a fire safety strategy of the building that accurately reflects the fire safety precautions; and design and construction information, services information; and information about fixtures, fittings and equipment. Unfortunately, Regulation 38 has been far from successful and the required information is rarely communicated to the dutyholders in a manner that meets the intention of the authors. There is no requirement for the information to be presented to either the Fire Service or the Building Control Body for assessment. The requirement is merely for the person carrying out the work to confirm that the required information has been passed over (CIC, 2017). The guiding philosophy of legislation requires organisations to assess the potential risks associated with their work activities and to introduce effective measures to control risks. However, in reality the current regulations set the bar too low, with the industry looking to satisfy the minimum standards by the cheapest means possible, magnified by a lack of approval scrutiny. In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 that killed 72 people, the UK Government commissioned the Hackitt Review (2018) of building regulations and fire safety. The Hackitt Review calls for radical change in culture in the construction industry and the regulatory system that assigns responsibility and holds people accountable. It also states that the Government should mandate a digital standard of record-keeping for design, construction and occupation of new Higher Risk Residential Buildings (HRRB) and refurbishments within HRRBs. A BIM-driven dataset is suggested, which requires duty-holders to generate a suitable evidence-base through which to deliver their responsibilities and maintain safety and integrity throughout the lifecycle of a building. This paper will examine the requirements set out in the Hackitt review and explores the need for a digital record of lifecycle building information. It examines examine the role of BIM as an enabler of the digital building information record and presents a conceptual framework that enables rapid realisation of the digital by default vision, via a Safe by Default Asset Delivery framework. It outlines the potential outcomes of the safe by default approach and discusses the potential opportunities and challenges likely to be considered if the BIM enabled “digital by default" vision was to be realised. <br

When will we learn? Improving lessons learned practice in construction

Purpose: The aim of the research is to improve lessons learned practices within construction contractor organisations. This will result in contractors' project teams having access to the most relevant lessons at the most appropriate time, in the most appropriate format. Scope: The research was based on the responses of 41 large UK contractor organisations to a questionnaire survey, detailed interviews with nine companies and three focus groups. The respondents were senior and middle managers variously involved in business improvement, knowledge management, and technical services. Results: The questionnaire survey identified methods, tools and processes used to collect lessons learned. The interviews and the focus groups uncovered the diverging requirements of corporate vs. site-based staff. The data contributed to the development of a project learning model and a conceptual model from which a Project Learning Roadmap was derived to support business leaders to improve their project lessons learned processes. This will enable organisations to develop individual solutions tailored to stakeholders' needs

BIM for the management of building services information during building design and use

BIM for the management of building services information during building design and us

Facilitating BIM-based sustainability analysis and communication in building design process

Population growth and resource scarcity has created unprecedented demand of sustainable buildings around the world. During design and construction processes, meeting this demand is considered an extremely challenging task, at least due to following several reasons. Firstly, the long-term sustainability of a building is difficult to define, let alone assess. Although there are standard assessment methods (e.g. BREEAM, LEED) and specific client requirements, each participant of the process may have different views and approaches to sustainability owing to their disciplinary practices and experiences. Secondly, although the most critical time to make decisions on a building’s sustainable features is during the early stages of design, building performance analysis (for relatively easy to agree and accurately predict performance criteria, such as energy efficiency) is usually performed after the design and construction documents are produced. This practice results in lost opportunities to maximise the sustainability of building design and technology options. Thirdly, it is widely documented that the sustainability progress in the AEC/FM industry has been hampered by fragmentation, low innovation, adversarial relationships and slow adoption of Information Communication Technologies. The emergence of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has promised an accelerated progress of sustainable building development. BIM promotes integration among building professionals and improves design goals by allowing multi-disciplinary information to be integrated within a single model. This creates an opportunity to conduct the analysis throughout the design process, concurrently with the production of the design documents. Despite these expected benefits, the practice of using BIM for sustainability has not been widely embedded within the AEC/FM industry. In order to achieve a step change in current processes for optimal results, there is a need to define requirements of the process, tools, systems and stakeholders responsibilities of conducting sustainability assessment during the design stages of a building. To align with the industry practice, this should be based on the recently developed BIM Overlay to the RIBA Outline Plan of Work which offers a response to the UK Government’s commitment to have all projects utilising BIM from 2016. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review along with a conceptual model based on the RIBA Plan of Work 2013. The model describes the main stages of the sustainability design process and the key inputs and outputs of each stage

LOD object content specification for manufacturers within the UK using the IDM standard

UK manufacturers are gradually embracing the adoption of Level 2 Building Information Modelling (BIM) standards (3D models and embedded data) within their product model elements. However, these are not always well defined due to inaccuracies related to the scope and the content of the model attributes. Product Data Templates (PDTs) are currently being created as a solution to provide structured model element data to manufacturer’s clients. However, defining PDTs data has been particularly challenging for manufacturers, as there is a scarcity of content knowledge which includes BIM uses (i.e. electrical design) and processes (i.e. cable tray sizing) that support client’s lifecycle processes. Similarly, few studies have investigated the Level of Development (LOD) that manufacturers should use to create their model element product data. In this paper, we therefore propose a generic industry approach to create and maintain model element product data at different LODs using the Information Delivery Manual (IDM) and we evaluate it for future improvement. The IDM can capture processes at the informational (i.e. attributes), behavioural (i.e. project stage), organisational (i.e. actor), and functional (i.e. business rules) level. A case study on Made to Stock Products for the Design use has been created to drawn recommendations for the behavioural and informational IDM perspective. In order implement the LOD on an industry basis and for its ease of use, we recommend matching the IDM Exchange models to a LOD graphical standard and keeping the BPMN free of stage bindings. This issue should be further studied for standardisation purposes. The benefit of this approach is that manufacturers could use the IDM to create product model element data in relation to their client’s processes at different LODs for its inclusion within BIM Information Systems (IS)

A grounded theory based framework for level of development implementation within the information delivery manual

The present study follows the progress of the level of development (LOD) specification from its inception in 2005 to its latest updates in 2018, a total of 42 guidelines from North America and Europe are reviewed. To organise the presented literature and to provide a comprehensive framework of LOD implementation within the information delivery manual (IDM), a LOD grounded theory-based taxonomy is introduced. The variables that constitute this taxonomy are BIM purpose, Stage, Role, Classification System, Attribute, Graphical information, Scale, LOD and Net benefits. The result of this exercise is a comprehensive view of the LOD construct impact on project performance which can be studied as a cumulative framework, where new research on the constructs can be added. Therefore, this allows a point towards the direction where further work is needed within the field of LOD-IDM implementation, such as the study of its use for data management among other uses

Strategic e-business framework: a holistic approach for organisations in the construction industry

Strategic consideration and actions are crucial for organisations in the construction industry to implement e-business successfully and have continuous improvement. However, only focusing on one concept is not sufficient for construction companies to formulate their e-business strategy because of the fragmented needs and requirements within the organisations. To address the industry’s specific needs and requirements, an ebusiness strategy should include multiple elements rather than one element, and collaboration of partners should lie at the heart of the e-business strategy. Also, the strategic approaches currently available for ebusiness implementation are mainly ‘reactive’ and lack a long-term consideration or vision. To improve ebusiness implementation, it is important for organisations in the industry to create a positive organisational culture and consider both the emergent and long-term needs across organisation boundaries. This paper presents a Strategic e-Business Framework for organisations in the construction industry. The Framework provides a holistic approach for e-business strategy formulation and implementation. Organisations in the industry can work out a comprehension business solution for their e-business implementation using the Framework. The recommendations are also presented to illustrate how the Framework can benefit organisations in the construction industry potentially