Summary: |
The UK network of experts in objects and integration for construction has now been in existence for a year. In this time it has built up to over a hundred members drawn in almost equal parts from industry and research. The initial meetings of this network have strived to identify areas of concern in the domain as well as to provide feedback to the supporting government agency in terms of policy issues, and to inform its members of the range of issues in the domain.The first published output of this network is to be a survey of integrated project databases (IPDB) in February 1998. This initial survey, analysed and described in this paper, looks at IPDB development and use in the UK.Preliminary work of the network determined a set of criteria to be used to measure the development and impact of various IPDB. These criteria were then used to survey a range of EC supported, UK developed, and commercial implementations of IPDB. Though not comprehensive in terms of the total number of IPDB developments in the world, it gives an initial benchmarking of the state of this domain.The results of this survey, and the ongoing surveys of IPDB developments, are being used to inform the network and government of the state of play in this area. It provides a point to determine: what work has previously been done; which data models might be re-used; where tools reside that could be re-used; where commercial developments have taken place which implement portions of the surveyed projects; what the problems of commercialisation have been; where there are gaps in research; and what life-cycle stages are poorly addressed by IPDB development. |