A National Strategy for CAAD and IT-Implementation in the Construction Industry the Construction Industry

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present a strategy for implementation of CAD and IT in the construction and building management#1 industry in Sweden. The interest is in how to make the best use of the limited resources in a small country or region, cooperating internationally and at the same time avoiding to be totally dominated by the great international actors in the market of information technology. In Sweden representatives from the construction and building management industry have put forward a research and development program called: “IT-Bygg#2 2002 - Implementation”. It aims at making IT the vehicle for decreasing the building costs and at the same time getting better quality and efficiency out of the industry.  The presented strategy is based on a seminar with some of the most experienced researchers, developers and practitioners of CAD in Sweden. The activities were recorded and annotated, analyzed and put together afterwards. The proposal in brief is that object oriented distributed CAD is to be used in the long perspective. It will need to be based on international standards such as STEP and it will take at least another 5 years to get established. Meanwhile something temporary has to be used. Pragmatically a “de facto standard” on formats has to be accepted and implemented. To support new users of IT all software in use in the country will be analyzed, described and published for a national platform for IT-communication within the construction industry.  Finally the question is discussed “How can architect schools then contribute to IT being implemented within the housing sector at a regional or national level?” Some ideas are presented: Creating the good example, better support for the customer, sharing the holistic concept of the project with all actors, taking part in an integrated education process and international collaboration like AVOCAAD and ECAADE.