IT-CODE

IT-CODE- IT in Collaborative Building Design

Authors:

Yoke-Chin Lai (i6ycl@civil.auc.dk),

Per Christiansson (pc@civil.auc.dk), Kjeld Svidt (ks@civil.auc.dk)

eSM@RT 2002 Salford University 21 November 2002

IT-CODE

HIGHLIGHTS

•Story-scenes of a project

•Problem Analysis & Prospective Resolution

•Definition of IT-CODE•Research Scope•Methodology

•Conclusion

•Objective

•Anticipated Outcome

•Provisional System Architecture

IT-CODE

Story-scenes of a Project

Story starts:

Location: In the office of Client A.

She is the managing director of a housing developing firm.

An idea strikes her about building residential apartments at site A for inhabitants from the middle-upper class.

Site A... Build apartments/condo

miniums... Middle-Upper

Class

Scene 1

IT-CODE

Scene 1-2

She carries out feasibility studies of the project based on the general scope in her mind

The concerns of feasibility studies comprise various administrative requirements, constraints related to the site and its occupation, the cost and time required for construction, and some basic technical issues.

consulting

Mr. Real Estate,..., can you check out the marketing potential of site A for me?

Mr. Real Estate

Mr. Technical Consultant

consulting

IT-CODE

Scene 1-4

Positive feasibility studies give green light to Client A to possess site A.

A building programme is then defined with the help of a building programmer.

A design team that consists of architects, structural engineers, and building services engineers, is appointed in parallel with a building controller and a construction manager via contracual agreement.

IT-CODE

Client A is briefing her requirements of the project to the appointed design team.

The design team members tries to capture what are her requirements while providing some suggestions in accordance with their own experiences.

Communication problems arise between Client A and the design team...

Location: Conference RoomActivity: Meeting between Client A and Design Team

My idea is ...I would like to have ...Bla Bla...

Yes... Ok...But...I have some suggestions...

Scene 2

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Location: Conference Room & Vacation ResortActivity: Meeting between Client A and Design Team

This is our vision in the near future.

Hey, sorry guys! I am now on my vacation. But

I can also describe my ideas concerning the

project now.

It’s ok, no problem. Let’s start now, we are all

here and ready.

Scene X

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Objectives

•How can IT supported collaborative mechanism be implemented in the early design phase, including client briefing and conceptual design?

•How will an individual’s working method change to be more time efficient?

•How to improve the collaboration among stakeholders?

•How can the design process be documented to serve as an efficient project memory?

The Objectives are to answer the following questions:

Problem Analysis & Prospective Resolution

ArchitectClient Engineer Entrepreneur

Time

Possibilities

Time

Possibilities

Engineer

Entrepreneur

Architect

Client

Concurrent Engineering Time Saved Concept (Dawood, 2001)

Traditional Workflow

Concurrent Workflow

Time concern - paradigm shift from conventional sequential workflow to the concurrent one.

•Difficulties in communication??

•Difficulties in understanding each others??

•Trained in different professional aspects.

•Different backgrounds.

•Different languages used.

•Different working habits.

???

ZZzz

ZZ

Bla Bla Bla....

!!

Client

Constractor

Engineer

Architect

IT-CODE

Problem Analysis & Prospective Resolution

May enable a task to be achieved in the least time, with the best results under the best consensus of participants.

Use of common product models

•Emergence of problem such as increasing the complexity of the common models, generating mass amount of (product) data, etc.

Designer A

Design Product

Designer B

Time

HOW?

Effective Design Collaboration:

IT-CODE

•Argument: meta model may devote to reduce complexity, improve data navigability and information interoperability.

-Use of meta models in design process may devote to benefits including to reduce system complexity, provide model flexibility, and integrate multiple and heterogeneous databases (Draskic, 1999)

-Test the argument – use meta model

-as the basis of virtual workspace incorporated in IT-CODE.

-represent product model, process model and design intent (design rationale).

Problem Analysis & Prospective Resolution

IT-CODE

•Communication is the basis of collaboration.

Problem Analysis & Prospective Resolution

•Inefficient communication raises issues as

•Difficulties in capturing demand specified by client.

•Slow and ineffective decision making process due to certain degree of misunderstanding.

What I want

to talkWhat I talk

What you hear

What you

perceivex % y % z %

•Meaning of communication is apparently distorted throughout this simple process.

IT-CODE

•Embedded with a dynamic knowledge management system

•Manage (capture, document, version and index) design intent (design rationale).

•Take stakeholder’s language into account- able to capture client briefing.

Problem Analysis & Prospective Resolution

What is IT-CODE????

A system to enhance collaboration among stakeholders for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of design process (mainly at the early stage) of a building project via semantic web that is organised and structured by meta level languages.

Can be analogous to Memex (Bush, 1945)

Semantic Web

Memex•“…a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It resembled a desk.... Within would lie several gigabytes (if not more) of storage space, filled with textual and graphic information, and indexed according to a universal scheme...“

(Vannevar Bush)

IT-CODE

•Focus on stakeholders group

•Owners group / Clients

•Architects

•Engineers

•Focus on activities

•Early design stage(incl. Analysis, synthesis, simulations, decision-makings, reviews, evaluation, etc.)

•Client briefing & conceptual design

•Design knowledge transfer

Research Scope

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Research Task

To develop meta model to represent knowledge (information and data) that is generated throughout the early design phase.

To develop ontology (meta model schema) to define the vocabularies used and their associated relationships in the meta model so that the meta model can be both human and machine readable.

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Methodology

•Participate in an ongoing project as case study.

•Observation

•Interview / (Questionnaire Survey)

•Analyses of working methods in collaborative multidisciplinary design.

•Develope a demonstrator (prototype system).

•Verify the demonstrator.

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Anticipated Outcome 1

•Common Workspace (face-to-face & distributed- location independent).

•Common work tools (IT tools).

•Capture and document unstructured and semi-structured information.

•Time independent (synchronous & asynchronous)

•Implement common Standard (IFC)

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•Common information source

•Support fast and effective decision making

•Fast & accurate search on (previous) cases with/without time specific requirement.

•temporal database supported virtual building

•Archive concurrent case associated with its development process for future reuse.

•User friendliness with GUI to improve user’s interactivity.

•Flexible and expandable

Anticipated Outcome 2

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•Build up share value among stakeholders via

•Information/data, and tools sharing, e.g.

•Communication tools.

•Content sharing tools

•Joint activity tools.

•Utilise semantic web as technology base.

•Content annotation and vocabulary definition (ontology technologies to extract tacit knowledge from stakeholders at early design stage).

•Ontology search

•Both machine and human readable and processable.

Anticipated Outcome 3

Trust LevelDigital signature, annotations...

Logic LevelKIF, RuleML...

Ontology Level

WordNet, RosettaNet, DAML+OIL...

Metadata Level

RDF, RDFS, Topic Maps...

Structure Level

XML, XML DTD/Schema, XSL...

Internet Level

Unicode, URL...

PlanningCPR, SPAR, PDDO...

ProcessesBPML, WPDL, PSL...

ServicesUDDI, WSDL, DAML-S...

TransactionsXML/EDI, KQML...

CommunicationTCP/IP, HTTP, SOAP,...

Conceptual levels and technologies of the Semantic Web (Source: Hyvønen (ed.), 2002)

Definition of Ontology

- This term has been used in several disciplines, from philosophy to knowledge engineering.

-E.g. 2 : Perspective of information science

-”An ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents.” (Tom Gruber)

-E.g. 1: Perspective of philosophy

-”Ontology is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality.” (Barry Smith)

-In general, ontology comprised concepts, concept properties, relationships between concepts and constraints.

-It is defined independently from the actual data.

-It reflects a common undestanding of the semantics of the domain of discourse.

- Ontology language (e.g. RDF/(S)) is used to define vocabularies that describe the semantics of the domain of discourse.

Script

Script

KN_A

Namespace_A

KN_B

Namespace_B

KN_C

Namespace_C

Teams’ Records

Metamodeldatabase

Process Models database

Temporal database

Building Product-Model

Database

Design Rationale database

Product Knowledge-base

Collaborate

NotCollaborate

User GUI

User Interface Control Module

Dynamic Knowledge Management Module

Metamodel Control Module

Communication & Navigation Control Module

Synthesis

AnalysisTool-box Module

Local Database

Tool-box Module

(Local) Search Module

Capture (design rationale & users

requirements) Module

User/ Design Team Level

Application LevelKnowledge Intervention Level

Repositories Level

Client Side Applications ServerDatabases Server

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CONCLUSION

•R&D are still on the move

•Setting up demonstrator based on real cases (ongoing & finished)

•Collecting case studies

•Technical work

•GUI developing

•Meta model schema preparation

•Etc.

Example (meta model schema of a project description (incomplete))

SubClassOf

SubClassOf

SubClassOf

SubClassOfSubClassOf

SubClassOf

SubClassOf

SubClassOf

SubClassOf

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That’s all Folks!!!