Decision problem structuring method for the specification and selection of active fire protection systems

The UK along with the EU has witnessed a recent proliferation of designs for potential active fire suppression systems for the mitigation of fire risks in buildings and equipment; from five in 1986 (BSI, 1986) to eleven in 2011 (BSI, 2011a). However, each technology remains limited to the protection of certain types of application only, rather than offering a solution to guard against all possible hazards. This trend occurs at the same time as a transition from prescriptive to performance based standards and against the backdrop of the current nonprescriptive regulatory frameworks including the Building Regulations (HMSO, 2010), The Regulatory (fire) Reform Order (HMSO, 2005) and associated guidance (Approved Documents, standards, codes of practice and guides). Hazards can be difficult to assess and describe and the inequality or absence of satisfactory methods is notable in many recently published guidance documents. Active fire protection systems are installed to meet legislative requirements (to protect life), and / or when identified as appropriate by a cost-benefit analysis (e.g. to achieve risk reduction for business resilience purposes or to historic assets). There are many guidance documents available to assist users and designers in choosing and specifying appropriate active fire protection. These documents vary in age, relevance, scope, quality, impartiality and suitability. The Fire Protection Association (FPA) and several leading insurers who participate in its risk management work, have identified the requirement for assistance with the decision making process of analysing fire hazards and matching them to appropriate candidate systems, in order to make informed and impartial recommendations. This has led to the undertaking of a four year research project aimed at developing a decision problem structuring method and a software tool (Expert System), for the specification and selection of Active Fire Protection Systems. The research aim is to develop a tool that will assist users in making an informed selection of a system that is likely to best suit their needs and thereby contribute to overall improvements in fire safety and outcomes. This paper presents a summary of the work to date, focusing on the demand for the work, development of the methodology and practical application of the emerging Expert System

Information resilience in a digital built environment.

Information is the underpinning driver in the Digitised Built Environment and crucial to the Centre for Digital Built Britain’s agenda. Threats to information affect the intrinsic, relational and security dimensions of information quality. Therefore, the DBE requires capabilities of people, and requirements of the process, software and hardware for threat prevention and reduction. Existing research and protocols seldomly outline the capabilities and requirements needed to reduce threats to information. The aim of this report is to develop an information resilience framework which outlines the capabilities and requirements needed to ensure the resilience of information throughout its lifecycle; creation, use, storage, reuse, preserve and destroy. The findings highlight the need for people’s (stakeholder) competencies and behaviours which are driven by cognitive abilities such as attention, learning, reasoning and perception. Furthermore, process’ requirements such as embedding validation check process, standard requirements for Level of Detail, digital upskilling, among others, were identified. Additionally, identified software requirements include its ability to be customised to meet the project needs, detect conflicts and provide context of information. Finally, hardware requirements encompass facilitating backup, having a high capacity system and being inaccessible to peripherals. This research will be further extended to the development of a decision-making assessment tool to measure capabilities and requirements in the entire lifecycle of built assets

Collaborative BIM in the cloud and the communication tools to support it

Process in the AEC industry is characterised by the distributed and temporary nature of project teams; discipline specific teams engage in a highly collaborative process with not yet fully standardised requirements for information exchange which often results in chaotic communication patterns. This collaborative process makes communication and coordination challenging and intensifies the need for sophisticated software tools. Efforts to address some of the UK construction industry’s problems have seen rapid acceleration of BIM adoption in recent years. The exchange of interoperable building information models across teams provides the opportunity for an improved communication paradigm, where the “structured model” rather than the “document” acts as the focal unit of communication. Since collaborators are geographically distributed, this communication type finds its natural environment in online collaboration platforms hosting building information models. Effective collaboration requires coordinated communication and communicated coordination. BIM can be expressed as the “language of construction” and requires structure and standardization even on the human communication level. The life-cycle approach will pose additional collaboration requirements. Integrated, intuitive communication tools for BIM should replace e-mail. A preliminary analysis of data from the usage of online collaboration software, including network graph representations, provides some insight into usage patterns and serves as a basis for similar analyses as more of project data becomes available. Improved results would come from a better designed analysis of more projects

BIM and online collabortion platforms - an investigation into emerging requirements

It is widely documented that productivity in the AEC/FM industry has been hampered by fragmentation, low innovation, adversarial relationships and slow adoption of Information Communication Technologies. The rising recognition of the potential of Building Information Modelling (BIM), combined with online collaboration platforms, provides an opportunity for addressing those industry obstacles. This study reviews existing literature pertaining to how BIM and online collaboration platforms can facilitate the much desired integration within the industry. Subsequently, a scoping study for UK online collaboration platforms is carried out. Despite the expected benefits of BIM technology, it has not been widely embedded within the UK AEC/FM industry. This is mainly attributed to the incompatibility of current practices with BIM. Current collaborative practices still result in some rework, suboptimal design decisions, constructability issues and waste. Factors relating to the introduction of collaborative BIM practices revolve around a shared vision, clear responsibilities and technology ease of use. The essential role of online collaboration platforms for construction organizations reaching full BIM maturity is not yet fully appreciated. Additionally, corporate BIM strategies lack a clear vision. The scoping study identifies some trends in the evolution of online collaboration platform functionalities and sets the ground for a gap analysis

Capabilities needed in Information management for a digital built Britain

Network FOuNTAIN is the Network For ONTologies And Information maNagement in Digital Built Britain, a project funded by the Centre for Digital Built Britain. The vision of the Network is for all stakeholders in Digital Built Britain (DBB) to be able to meet their information needs. With the establishment of concepts such as Building Information Modelling and Common Data Environments, built environment design, construction and operation are becoming increasingly information-intensive. The Network undertook five workshop activities between July and December 2018. This paper summarises the proceedings of these workshops, and in particular establishes future capabilities needed to realise the vision of DBB. The first workshop sought to establish the scope of “Information Management”. It was concluded that the capability to gauge Information Management Maturity was needed. The second and third workshops focused on ontologies and reviewed the variety of standards currently available. It was concluded that the capability was needed to establish the appropriate scope of standardisation, and to design or extend existing ontologies in general. The capability was also needed to develop current classification systems, schema and frameworks, Uniclass 2015 in particular, to maximise the potential to share data. The fourth workshop explored system requirements; it identified three modes of consuming information and the corresponding software requirements for each mode. The three modes identified are: Search & Retrieval, Browsing & Expiration and Information Delivery. The fifth and final workshop focused on business models and concluded that the capability was needed to identify and derive business value from Information Management. The paper closes with a research agenda required to deliver those capabilities. Fundamental research is needed to formulate a process of establishing the appropriate scope of standardisation for Information Management at project, organisation and industry levels. This research needs to unfold in the context of emerging related international standards. <br

An evaluation of current collaborative prototyping practices within the AEC industry

'Collaborative working' and 'prototyping' have both been identified by many within the industry as two methods of working that can help organisations become more profitable and productive. However, when used collectively the potential exists to bring improvements to the Architectural, Engineering and Construction sectors through the eradication of waste and re-work. The concept of 'Collaborative Prototyping' provides a process that challenges existing cultural attitudes and working processes and advocates a change in the way conventional projects are managed, in order to achieve a more competitive industry. This paper presents the results of a study on the evaluation of current Collaborative Prototyping practices within the Architectural, Engineering and Construction industry. It reviews existing collaborative methods of working along with current developments. An evaluation of the role of 3D modelling and prototyping practices has also been conducted, and the current levels of the industry’s use are established. This paper concludes that the industry makes little use of Collaborative Prototyping, and therefore at present does not maximise the potential that prototyping and collaborative working offer in improving working practices

Information management in UK-based architecture and engineering organizations: drivers, constraining factors, and barriers

The need to improve collaborative working, knowledge sharing, and operational effectiveness has made effective Information Management a growing priority for Architecture and Engineering (A & E) organizations in the UK construction industry. While significant research has been carried out in the construction industry on project Information Management, limited work has been carried out to understand Information Management from an organisational paradigm. This paper presents the findings of an investigation into the nature of Information Management within A & E organizations in the UK construction industry. Interviews were conducted with experts across nine large architectural and multidisciplinary consultancies, the outputs of which were analysed using thematic analysis. From this, 26 themes across three core categories classed as drivers, constraining factors, and barriers which shape Information Management practices in construction organizations emerged. The findings show that Information Management is indeed of strategic significance to organizations and an organizational dimension is necessary to better align information needs with an organisation’s operational processes. They also show that context-dependent factors exist which shape the nature of Information Management in line with the specific needs of each organizations. Therefore, the effectiveness of an organisation’s Information Management practices is not absolute, but rather relative to its level of alignment to the organisation’s chosen mode of operation. The findings provide a much needed practical view of the complexities of Information Management, highlighting that particularly within multidisciplinary organizations; a unifying approach is much more practical and appropriate than a single approach to managing information

A case study on evaluating and selecting soil /pipeline interaction analysis software for the oil and gas industry

The evaluation and selection of appropriate software solutions to meet an organisation’s inherent business requirements can be a problematic process that if done incorrectly can have a significant, costly and adverse effect on the business and its processes. The aim of this paper is to showcase a process and evaluation criteria in order to identify the right engineering software for the identified business requirement such as functionality and usability. A case study approach coupled with an action-based research methodology was undertaken to aid an organisation within the Oil and Gas Industry, by using an innovative solution suitable for conducting stress analysis for Soil-Pipeline Interaction Analysis (SPIA). Through development and use of the below presented software selection and evaluation process to capture and measure key requirements, it was possible to determine a viable approach to selection of a suitable software for the organisation’s requirements. This paper investigates software evaluation criteria for evaluating software packages and methodologies for selecting software packages. The study will also provide an explanation of the adopted methodology. The key findings of the study are: (1) there is currently no universal selection criteria within the gas and oil engineering industry, (2) how the presented methodology could be used to capture business requirements to evaluate software for SPIA consultants (3) findings must be validated based on the evaluation technique and evaluation criteria for selecting software packages for the engineering industry. The findings of the study are offered to support consultants in the Oil and Gas industry to improve software selection methodologies for SPIA

Network FOuNTAIN A CDBB network: For ONTologies and information maNagement in digital built Britain: Final report

Network FOuNTAIN is the Network For ONTologies And Information maNagement in Digital Built Britain. The Network is supported by the Centre for Digital Built Britain. The vision of the Network is for all stakeholders in Digital Built Britain (DBB) to be able to meet their information needs. With the establishment of concepts such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Common Data Environments (CDE), built environment design, construction and operation are becoming increasingly information-intensive. The Network undertook five workshop activities between July and December 2018. This report summarises the proceedings of these workshops, and in particular establishes future capabilities needed to realise the vision of DBB