Summary: |
In the last decade or so design/engineering of building and construction projects is gradually incorporating advanced information technologies, like Product Data Technology. The main drive for this development comes from the demand for meaningful electronic communication between CAxx systems of various disciplines. Getting rid of the islands of automation and information improves both the design processes and the design results.However islands of automation and information not only exist in design/engineering, but also in the construction phase. Moreover the design/engineering and the construction faces as a whole, are still very much isolated.Now that in the foreseeable future main contractors will receive a complete project description, a product model, in electronic format, the question becomes important how PDT can support site construction.In recent studies, researchers in the field of planning, scheduling and cost-estimating of construction projects, discerned the importance of the ability to deal with explicit information about construction methods and technologies is an important capability for future support systems. The main idea is that experiences and knowledge from earlier construction projects are stored in construction methods. By representing these construction methods in a standardized electronic form (i.e. databases, objects), an organization, such as a main contractor, is able to exchange information with other organizations and allows an organization to assemble a repository of techniques which they are familiar with. These computer-interpretable models for the representation of construction methods can be used to support the automated generation of plans, schedules and cost-estimations.This paper reports about a study into the question how to generate plans, schedules and cost-estimations given (1) a standardized product model and (2) a library of standardized process objects implementing information about construction methods. Initial results of a system that supports the translation of the product oriented design/engineering view into the process oriented main contractor view will be shown and discussed. |