Transforming the Productivity of People in the Built Environment

This chapter explores how we create and support a digitally enabled, agile, competent, and ultimately, productive workforce and determines the key research questions that need to be addressed if Digital Built Britain (DBB) is to provide return on investment and succeed as the catalyst for evolving the manner in which we conceive, plan, design, construct, operate, and interact with the built environment. The proposed vision is a digital competency management ecosystem where interdependent stakeholders are incentivised to work together in coopetition to create, capture, infer, interpret, specify, integrate, accredit, apply, use, monitor, and evolve competence as a working (data) asset. This needs to be in a consistent, objective, explicit, and scalable manner, with end2end transparency and traceability for all stakeholders that overcome the challenges of competency management. Moreover, a core element must be an ecosystem organised around digital infrastructure of competency frameworks and other knowledge sources of competence, so that competency frameworks are in digital operation and dynamic context.

Development of a Building Information Modelling Threshold Capability Framework to Enable Global Curriculum Co-Integration

The construction and project management graduates are entering an ever-changing workforce that will require a smarter way of working. Creation, use, and management of building information modelling (BIM) models is a critical part of this smarter world. The aim of this research is to develop a threshold capability framework within the context of a broader digital construction project management curriculum to enable the global integration of BIM into a construction management curriculum. This chapter reports the evaluation of the framework through an analysis of 21 interviews with key stakeholder groups. Much effort is required to guide Australian construction practitioners to embrace a greater use of BIM in practice. This research identifies that the concept of graduate resilience skills in students is critical for the success of such a transition. Infusing construction management digital literacy is a long term and evolving exercise, and confidence in delivery capability must be simultaneously built.

The Evolving Integration of BIM Into Built Environment Programmes in a Higher Education Institute

The recent publication of the Roadmap to Digital Transition for Ireland's Construction Industry 2018-2021 clearly identified training and education as key priorities in the development of core BIM competences to stimulate the transition towards a more collaborative digital working environment. It identified an urgent need for a consistent and coherent digital experience for students in Irish education and industry to help grow capacity and maturity in the use of BIM and other innovative techniques. The higher education sector has a vital role to play. Key to this will be ensuring appropriate graduate knowledge, skills and competences, ongoing professional development and upskilling of higher education staff, and significant collaboration with industry. This chapter will present a best practice example of academic-industry collaboration, which resulted in the delivery of a flexible Level 8 programme for industry, the implementation of a BIM strategy within an academic context, and the establishment of a focused research group, which is currently engaged in ongoing applied research.

A Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) Study on Industry 4.0 Among the Public Sector Construction Client in Malaysia

The impact of Industry 4.0 will amplify globalization, automation, virtualization, integration, and agility towards the construction industry's development in light of different stakeholders in the industry. In this chapter, people's perceptions, awarenesses, and operations on Industry 4.0's innovation and technological growth, which constitutes a new scenario for future construction industry, will be explored. The outcome of this Industry 4.0 study provides an overview of the knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) among the public sector construction client in Malaysia. This would enable the establishment of the baseline (reference value) for future intervention strategies by having construction public sector, particularly the client, as the driver for change towards construction digitalisation.

Digital Transformation and Construction

In recent years, the construction industry has experienced the introduction of emerging technologies developed to improve project outcomes and labor productivity, including BIM. Construction companies feel the pressure to adopt these technologies and the importance that all project stakeholders have an understanding of the technologies and their impact on industry change. In many ways, BIM is the connection between these technologies and provides a single source of information for sharing within the project team and across the facility life cycle. As the digital transformation proliferates all aspects of the BE, higher education is challenged to prepare design, engineering, and construction students who are ready to enter the workforce. The challenge is complex as educators strive to meet the criteria set forth by their institution, policy decisions/regulation, accreditation standards, and industry expectations. While workforce requirements typically respond to the national economy, digital transformation in the construction industry is global.

Blockchains for Use in Construction and Engineering Projects

This chapter describes blockchains and illustrates this explanation using the results of a prototype project for an industrial application for a construction project. The chapter describes the application and how modular software components can be used to assemble a blockchain solution. The chapter concludes with a design of the system architecture. The background to blockchain technology includes a description of the evolving nature due to communal, open software consortia and an accelerated prototyping of systems. Four recommendations are made in the chapter. These include the need to form consortia for prototyping applications, encouraging government involvement, the need for engagement with the open software development community, and the suggestion that systems should be designed to support Lean production. A final section offers a range of discussion topics on the current state of the technology and where to expect area of increased interest. These are summarized in three areas: Lean management, Industry 4.0 and smart cities, and topics around privacy and security.

Smart City Development and Implications

Smart cities can be described as the use of modern technology to improve urban space, as well as interacting with citizens to increase quality of life. It covers every aspect of society's and people's livelihoods, from monitoring of public space to public transport services, home automation, cloud storage, and electronic public and business services. The advancement and global practice of information and communication technology (ICT) have led to its fundamental consideration in the development and navigation of cities. This has called for the need to have innovations using technology to improve the quality of life and enhance natural environment. Therefore, this chapter is aiming to provide further understanding and clarity on smart cities with inclusion of several initiatives and examples already applied in practice within the UK and across other countries. The research is mainly including secondary sources from the literature to review smart cities. Key recommendations are provided for policy developers, local authorities, academics, and students interested in the field.

Transforming Construction Waste Analytics to Support Circular Economy and Carbon Footprint Reduction

The fourth industrial revolution transforms the built environment through several highly intelligence systems such as drones, 3D printers, robotics, as well as building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information systems (GIS). This transformation has widely been applied in buildings. However, to establish environmental sustainability in the built environment, this transformation needs to be expanded in other sectors that impact climate change such as construction and demolition waste materials. The aim of this chapter is to introduce a new conceptual model that can measure construction and demolition waste in real time and optimise their carbon footprint spatially. A quantitative methodology that embraces a measuring protocol and geospatial research method is proposed for this purpose. The proposed model is capable of measuring the recycling potential result in construction sites to support the circular economy as well as to mitigate the associated carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) with materials' embodied energy, transportation, and treatment.

BIM and IoT for Facilities Management

The AEC industry is facing a digital transformation that is improving the efficiency of services involved in designing, building, and operating assets and the users' well-being. Such a transformation towards sustainable smart cities is underpinned by two disruptive technologies: building information modelling (BIM) and internet of things (IoT). In this chapter, the authors present a review of studies that have focused on the identification of BIM and IoT technologies applicable to AEC industry processes, describing suitable strategies for data collection, storage and sharing, and fields of application. They also present data from two case studies that help us to understand how BIM can support better facilities management. From the literature, it was found that process improvements are a predominant research focus, reinforcing that successful BIM and IoT adoption goes beyond the acquisition of technology. The case studies revealed that a framework for prioritising areas is still needed for giving direction to researchers and practitioners concerning where to start the digital transition.

BIM Education in the Dominican Republic

Lack of BIM skilled professionals and lack of education and BIM training are key challenges to BIM implementation. The provision of BIM education in higher education institutions is seen as the main solution to these challenges. This chapter is part of an on-going Ph.D. research about the implementation of BIM in the Dominican Republic, a country with interest in implementing BIM but suffering from many challenges including lack of BIM education. This study aims to present the development of a framework to guide the integration of BIM in university curricula in the D.R., which is part of a comprehensive framework, outcome of the Ph.D. research. The framework was developed from a thorough literature on BIM education as well as an analysis of existing BIM Education frameworks. Moreover, findings of the research about BIM education in the D.R. are presented to describe the presence of BIM education in the country.