Recently I submitted an abstract for the CAADRIA 2006 'Rhythm and Harmony in the Bit-Sphere' conference in Kumamoto, Japan. I am pleased to say the abstract was accepted so now I have the arduous task of completing a paper for submission January 21st 2006. The comments that came back were very good (compared to others I have received) and these are included below the abstract.
USING WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES TO PRESERVE DESIGN HISTORY AND IMPROVE COLLABORATION
Abstract. This paper describes ongoing research into how emerging Internet concepts used in conjunction with existing Information Technologies (IT) can improve inter-project communication and understanding. The emphasis of the research is to use technology as an enabler to share personal thoughts and enhance the conversation that takes place within a development team. It stems from the observation that the emphasis of many new Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) technologies is to minimise and diffuse project conversation with highly complex, machine interpretable building information models.
Conversation and collaboration play a crucial role within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. No matter the technology employed, without effective communication or understanding of design issues as conveyed by the client the chances of successfully meeting project objectives are severely handicapped (Barrett, Hudson and Stanley, 1996). Currently there is no simple, transparent way of documenting, reviewing and searching this conversation throughout the lifecycle of a project. Consequently information about design decisions and issues are lost as development responsibilities shift between groups who maintain different objectives within a project.
Although the AEC industry has proven slow to adopt new process enhancing technologies it has been very swift in accepting email as a means of communication (Swee-Lean and Nga Na, 2004). More complex collaboration technologies ranging from the Building Information Model to project Intranets have struggled to gain the same level of acceptance even though research by Arayici and Aouad (2004) and Al-Reshaid (1999) has shown many benefits in their respective adoption. A factor identified by Anumba (1998) for this slow adoption is the limited time and financial resources available within AEC organizations to retrain staff and change internal and external collaboration processes.
Project teams are usually brought together for a relatively short but intense period of time. Following project completion these unique teams are dissolved just as quickly and often are never formed again. As a consequence it is difficult to justify the investment in time and resources required to implement complex IT-based collaboration solutions. A further barrier to adoption is the differential application of IT skills across the AEC industry. Therefore in order for a new technology to gain broad acceptance and be most beneficial it must be applicable to the broadest audience with the minimum investment required from all parties.
Web 2.0 is the name given to a series of new technology concepts that are profoundly affecting the way users are experiencing the Internet (Hammersley, 2005). Web 2.0 technologies like Really Simple Syndication (RSS), ‘blogging’ and ‘tagging’ focus on the creation of social networks and place an emphasis on actively sharing data. A key reason these technologies are being adopted very quickly is because just like email they are simple to understand and implement (Bosworth, 2004). This paper proposes a distributed Web 2.0 technology framework that works with the email and Internet tools already available to store, track and search for design decisions and communication. Through the reutilization of existing tools a user familiarity is maintained and the cost of entry for participants in this conversation is significantly reduced.
The primary objective of this research is to preserve the rich design history of a project from conception to completion. Submitted information can be intelligently searched using the meta-data sourced from syndicated data feeds about team members, project timelines, work diaries and email communication. Once indexed users can tag documents and messages in order to provide a further, far richer layer of meta-data to assist in searching, identification of issues and semantic identification. This strategy of defining AEC semantics through social interaction differs greatly from that of more complex, computer interpretable solutions such as Industry Foundation Classes (Wix and Liebich, 2001). Rather than abstracting information to suit a generic yet highly intelligent building model, the emphasis is on preserving the participant’s own thoughts and conversation about decisions and issues in order to create a forum for intelligent conversation as the design evolves.
References
Al-Reshaid K., Kartam, N.: 1999, Improving Construction Communication: The Impact of the On-Line Technology, W78: Information Technology in Construction, Vancouver, Canada.
Anumba, C.J.: 1998, Industry Uptake of Construction Innovations – Key Elements of a Proactive Strategy, W78: The Life-Cycle of Construction IT Innovations, Stockholm, Sweden.
Arayici Y., Aouad G.: 2004, Requirements Engineering Process in the CIC Development: The Divercity Project Case Study, proceedings from the 1st International SCRI Symposium, Salford, United Kingdom. Pp 169-181.
Barrett, P.S., Hudson, J., Stanley, C.: Is Briefing Innovation? Proceedings of CIB W65 Symposium. Glasgow, United Kingdom.
Bosworth, A.: 2004, transcript of presentation, International Conference on Service Oriented Computing, New York, USA. http://www.adambosworth.net/archives/000031.html
Hammersley, B.: 2005, Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom, O’Reilly Media, California, USA. Pp 5.
Swee-Lean, C., Nga-Na, L.: 2004, State-of-the-Art Internet Technology in Singapore’s Construction Industry: The Impact of the On-Line Technology, CIB: Construction IT Bridging the Distance, Auckland, New Zealand. Pp 378-386.
Wix J. & Liebich T.: 2001. Industry Foundation Classes Ifc 2x,
http://www.iai-international.org/Model/documentation/IFC_2x_Technical_Guide.pdf
Reviewer Comments
Good idea seemingly well thought out. Broadly applicable. What it needs, however, is an example or case study - not as the end or goal of the paper - but as an illustration of the efficacy of the process(es) described.
This is well presented perspective about limitations on the technology for collaborative work. It justifies the authors' efforts, although the abstract isn't entirely clear about the essential advantages of the authors approach nor does it provide any metrics to evaluate their findings. Will they really overcome the inherent in-practice limitations to such collaborative systems reducing time and cost and providing greater ease for handling the complex management of information? Have past models failed to grasp the nature of the communications needed? Can some abstract meta-data model capture this effectively? Hasn't this been the objective of such efforts to date? Perhaps these are issues to be more fully addressed in a final revision of the paper, the premise of which looks quite reasonable.
The research correctly identifies limited time and financial resources in hampering the acquistion of process enhancing technologies. It makes sense to use Web 2 technologies in this context, however, many of the examples cited in paragraph four of the abstract are quite generic. It will help if this presentation is illustrated with a technology demonstrator or nomenclatures showing the specific ways in which Web 2 technologies can be used by AEC industry.