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An Interdisciplinary Charrette: Setting an Academic Research Agenda for the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Initiative October 13 – 15, 2004 Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel Houston, Texas, USA
FINAL REPORT National Science Foundation Grant No. CMS-0439630 Prepared by:
Dr. Jorge A. Vanegas Georgia Institute of Technology With the Assistance of:
Dr. Annie R. Pearce Georgia Tech Research Institute And Contributions from:
Dr. James Garrett Carnegie Mellon University And
Dr. William O’Brien University of Texas at Austin December 01, 2004
Executive Summary Academic experts from multiple disciplines, and from different countries around the world, came together, over a three-day period, in a meaningful and focused dialogue aimed at strengthening and enhancing a new and bold paradigm of technology for the capital projects industry. This paradigm has been developed in recent years by FIATECH, a collaborative and non-profit R&D consortium composed of owners in the private and public sectors, engineering, procurement, and construction contractors, research organizations, and a small number of academic institutions, provides an integrating entity to address current challenges, pressures, issues, and opportunities facing the capital projects industry. One of FIATECH’s primary focuses to date has been the development of the Capital Projects Technology Roadmap, which provides an overarching vision of a highly automated capital project and facility management environment, in which the operations and systems of all project partners and project functions are instantly and securely interconnected and integrated across all phases of the facility life cycle, and within which data, information, knowledge, and experience are available on demand, wherever and whenever they are needed to all interested stakeholders. This roadmap envisions (1) automated systems, processes, and equipment, to drastically reduce the time and cost of planning, design, and construction of facilities and critical civil infrastructure systems in both the public and the private sectors; (2) scenario-based planning systems and modeling tools, to enable rapid and accurate evaluation of multiple project alternatives, to find the best balance of quality, value, performance, productivity, and cost and time effectiveness; and (3) new materials and methods, to reduce the time and cost of construction and greatly extend facility performance, functionality, aesthetics, affordability, sustainability, security, and responsiveness to changing business demands. The roadmap, which can be thought of as a virtual enterprise for the future, is composed of nine critical elements that act as an integrated solution set, with each element totally interoperable across the enterprise and over the project life cycle. Within each element of the model, specific strategic goals drive the development and execution of the tactical plans for achieving the vision. These nine elements and their goals are: 1. Scenario-based Project Planning: From a technological standpoint, the goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to achieve a fully automated project planning and conceptual design environment. From an operational viewpoint, the goal is to provide a level of automation and human interaction that best serves all the stakeholders by providing the ability to review project planning options and scenarios quickly and interactively, resulting in the highest value business-based project plan. 2. Automated Design: The goals of this element of the F/CPTR are to: (1) expedite advancement of automated design vision to improve cost-efficiency, enhance the lifecycle value of the design work products, and enable interoperability among entities associated with a project's lifecycle, resulting in significant cost savings and/or profit; and (2) Accelerate the development and deployment of an integrated
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suite of design advisors, automated design tools and processes in the capital projects arena that increase cost efficiency and improve project performance. 3. Integrated, Automated Procurement & Supply Network: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to identify and pursue business process improvements, capabilities and technologies to advance the development of fully integrated supply chain, procurement, project controls and financial system that provide the real-time collaboration and optimization across the entire supply network. 4. Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to make use of emerging information and automation technologies to minimize capital facility delivery costs (labor, material and equipment), facility deliver time, and life-cycle costs. 5. Intelligent Self-maintaining and Repairing Operational Facility: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to deliver cost-effective solutions, adaptable to specific operations, to determine optimum facility operating conditions, maintain operations within the performance envelope, provide real-time condition assessment, predict problems before they arise, and enhance performance of the asset over its life cycle. 6. Real-time Project and Facility Management, Coordination and Control: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to identify and pursue the data models, business processes and functions required to advance the development of a fully integrated facility planning and management system that can be seen as the real-time system across the design, construction and facility life cycle. 7. New Materials, Methods, Products, and Equipment: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to enable rapid, low-cost construction of modularized, lightweight structures in a fraction of current time spans, by applying automated equipment and highly engineered assembly methods with zero waste and zero rework. 8. Technology- & Knowledge-enabled Workforce: The goals of this element of the F/CPTR are currently under development and were not available prior to the charrette. 9. Lifecycle Data Management & Information Integration: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to create the foundation for a life cycle data management and information integration environment of the future that is adopted throughout the capital projects and facilities industry, centered on the need to deliver the right information, at the right time, to the right place. The active engagement of the academic community in implementing the FIATECH paradigm and the elements of the F/CPTR, not only would enhance and strengthen the infrastructure for research and education in the specific knowledge domains addressed within the roadmap, but more importantly, would ensure the delivery, operation, and maintenance of the facilities and the critical civil infrastructure systems that form the U.S. industrial base, supporting both the Nation’s economy and the way of life of modern society. Consequently, as a starting
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point in engaging the academic community, a select multidisciplinary group of 42 academic experts were identified, invited, and brought together, in a three-day charrette, to (1) present and discuss the functional elements and tactical plans of the roadmap; and (2) collect, discuss, and record their reactions and in-depth critiques. The principal outcomes of the charrette were: first, the alignment between the Academic Community and the FIATECH Consortium around the technology roadmap; second, the development of a research agenda for the Academic Community’s future involvement in supporting and furthering FIATECH’s vision, mission, and goals; and third, a proposal for collaboration in research and education programs, projects, and activities between the Academic Community and the FIATECH Consortium. The charrette formally documented: •
The principal drivers and expectations of the participants in the charrette regarding the event
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The full set of instinctual, emotional, and intellectual reactions of the participants in the charrette to the F/CPTR
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The full set of strengths, opportunities, and challenges posed by the F/CPTR that were identified by the participants in the charrette
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The main critiques of the F/CPTR and its elements done by the participants in the charrette
Based on the results of these discussions, the charrette proceeded to: •
Develop a research agenda for the academic community within the context and scope of the F/CPTR
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Establish a set of commitments and potential opportunities
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Identify multiple opportunities for collaboration
Within the principal findings of the charrette, three general areas of consensus emerged clearly. First, the general consensus of the participants is that they (a) all support both the vision and the scope of the F/CPTR; (b) applaud the openness of its development; and (c) believe that the development of a shared research agenda among industry, government, and academia is important to the academic community, and the F/CPTR provides an important venue for developing such an agenda. A second area of general consensus is that (a) many details of the current documents of the F/CPTR offer many opportunities for improvement; and (b) the academic community is willing to work in refining the current document to capitalize on these opportunities. Finally, the third area of general consensus is that (a) the academic community, which has several decades of experience in development of technologies that support the F/CPTR, is an important resource that has not been well-leveraged to date; and (b) participants acknowledge the need for both the academic community and FIATECH, to further develop formal means to collaborate on development of a shared research agenda, at three different levels: Page iii
•
Research in support of the global goal of moving the capital projects industry from its current state (i.e., the status quo) to the future state posed by FIATECH vision
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Research in support of the general goals within each of the stages of the general cycle of research to development to demonstration to deployment to research
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Research in support of the specific objectives within each of the specific elements of the F/CPTR
Within each of these three research levels, the academic research and education community can contribute objective, independent, and rigorous scientific investigation and review, focused on: 1. Observation, identification, quantification, documentation, synthesis, and analysis of an initial baseline state 2. Development of theories to explain the attributes, characteristics, and behavior of this initial baseline state, and of qualitative and quantitative research protocols and methodologies to test and validate them 3. Development of hypotheses on the impacts, effects, and implications of possible changes to this initial baseline state, resulting from new technologies, and of qualitative and quantitative research protocols and methodologies to test and validate them 4. Development of metrics and procedures to assess and evaluate the impacts, effects, and implications of these new technologies More specifically, the participants in the charrette proposed a wide range of research questions, which fall within seven potential research thrusts. They include: 1. General Industry Drivers and Issues: This research thrust addresses questions regarding the external context of the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap. 2. Theory and Methodology: This research thrust addresses questions regarding the theoretical foundation and framework of the roadmap. 3. System and Process Representation, Mapping, Modeling, Simulation, and Reengineering: This research thrust addresses questions regarding the need to understand, and to potentially change, the fundamental systems and processes embedded within the roadmap. 4. Indicators and Metrics for Analysis, Assessment, and Evaluation of Impacts, Costs, Benefits, and Value: This research thrust addresses questions regarding the need to quantity the costs, benefits, and value associated with, or stemming from, the implementation of the roadmap.
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5. Technology Development, Demonstration, Implementation, and Adoption: This research thrust addresses questions regarding the full cycle of development, demonstration, implementation, and adoption of technologies within the roadmap. 6. Knowledge Management, Education, and Training: This research thrust addresses questions regarding management of knowledge within the roadmap, and associated education and training issues. 7. Environments to Support Collaboration and Research: This research thrust addresses questions regarding the environments required within the roadmap, to support collaboration and research. In conclusion, charrette participants strongly support the general goals of the FCPTR and want to participate in both transforming the industry and in helping to develop shared research and development visions. They proposed several opportunities for collaboration between the academic community and FIATECH, and some steps that may be taken to achieve these joint visions and goals: •
Charrette participants generally expressed a strong desire to develop a community wide vision for research and development activities. The current state of the FCPTR and the activities of the charrette provide a basis for development of such a community vision.
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Correspondingly, there is a need for a formal outlet within our community to develop a vision document and supporting community. Existing venues such as trade associations and committees were discussed but were generally thought to not provide the necessary mechanisms to develop a vision document. As such, there is likely a need to develop a new venue/group for our community.
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There is a need for FIATECH to develop more structured mechanisms to accept input from the academic community towards further development of the FCPTR. In general, the charrette participants do not support or envision development of a competing roadmap and ascribe to the development of a common vision shared by government, industry, and academic stakeholders. Individual charrette participants and the steering committee should continue to work with FIATECH to generate such structured mechanisms.
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The charrette participants, while coming from a broad range of backgrounds, do not fully represent the skills needed to develop a comprehensive Roadmap of the scope and scale currently reflected in the FCPTR. There is a desire for openness and inclusiveness, and a next step for many participants is to identify expertise in their respective institutions that could aid development of the Roadmap.
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Charrette participants should report on their activities to support their commitments. The website developed for the charrette could be a venue for such reports and continued community development.
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Acknowledgements The overall planning and execution of this multidisciplinary charrette was executed under National Science Foundation Grant No. CMS-0439630, under the responsibility of Dr. Jorge Vanegas, as the Principal Investigator, and of the Georgia Institute of Technology as the institution of record. Dr. Vanegas was responsible for the overall organization and execution of all precharrette, charrette, and post-charrette activities. He also served as formal charrette host and lead facilitator. In addition, from the initial conception to the final execution of this event, he received technical guidance and support from: •
Dr. James Garrett, from Carnegie Mellon University
•
Dr. William O’Brien, from the University of Texas at Austin
•
Dr. Richard Jackson, Director of the FIATECH Consortium
Dr. Vanegas, Dr. Garrett, Dr. O’Brien, and Dr. Jackson, as members of the ad-hoc Steering Committee formed to realize the vision of the charrette, would like to formally acknowledge the guidance and funding received, in support of this event, from Dr. Jesus M. de la Garza, Program Director for the Information Technology and Infrastructure Systems Program Element, of the Infrastructure and Information Systems Program, within the Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems, of the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation. The Steering Committee members also would like to formally recognize the support provided by Dr. Annie Pearce, from the Georgia Tech Research Institute – GTRI, in the transcription of the material collected during the charrette, as the basis of the Final Report. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations included in this report are those of the participants in the charrette, and of the Steering Committee members, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Table of Contents Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii SECTION 1 Overview ..................................................................................................................................... 1-1 1.1
The Background of the Charrette.......................................................... 1-1
1.2
The Context of the Charrette................................................................. 1-2
1.3
Goals and Objectives of the Charrette .................................................. 1-5
1.4
Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact of the Charrette........................ 1-7
1.5
Charrette Execution Plan ...................................................................... 1-7
SECTION 2 The Point of Departure: The FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap (F/CPTR) .............................................................................................. 2-1 2.1
Background ........................................................................................... 2-1
2.2
The FIATECH Vision Model ............................................................... 2-2
SECTION 3 A Proposed Research Agenda................................................................................................... 3-1 3.1
General Overview ................................................................................. 3-1
3.2
Specific Research Areas ....................................................................... 3-4
SECTION 4 Next Steps ................................................................................................................................... 4-1 SECTION 5 References................................................................................................................................... 5-1 APPENDIX 1 List of Charrette Participants................................................................................................ A1-1 APPENDIX 2 Public Invitation Letter and Registration Form .................................................................. A2-1 APPENDIX 3 Formal Input Sheets ............................................................................................................... A3-1
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APPENDIX 4 Final Charrette Agenda.......................................................................................................... A4-1 APPENDIX 5 Summary of Charrette Activities .......................................................................................... A5-1 APPENDIX 6 Drivers and Expectations ....................................................................................................... A6-1 APPENDIX 7 Reactions.................................................................................................................................. A7-1 APPENDIX 8 Strengths, Opportunities, and Challenges ............................................................................ A8-1 APPENDIX 9 Critique .................................................................................................................................... A9-1 APPENDIX 10 Research Agenda Development ........................................................................................... A10-1 APPENDIX 11 Commitments ........................................................................................................................ A11-1 APPENDIX 12 Opportunities for Collaboration.......................................................................................... A12-1
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SECTION 1 Overview This section provides a brief overview of the background, context, goals and objectives, and execution plan for the charrette.
1.1
The Background of the Charrette
The capital projects industry, which includes both the delivery and the maintenance of facilities (e.g., commercial and institutional, industrial, and residential buildings) and civil infrastructure systems (e.g., transportation, energy, water and sewage, and communication systems, among others), is a critical element of the U.S. industrial base, providing the physical infrastructure that supports both the Nation’s economy and the way of life of modern society. However, delivering and maintaining this infrastructure is immensely challenging. The capital projects industry is fragmented, with great divergence in tools and technologies from company to company and across its supply chains. In addition, the industry is greatly affected by external factors such as population growth and demographic shifts, globalization of business, economic pressures in both the public and private sectors, and sustainability of the natural resource base, among many others. Finally, the industry faces serious issues such as a large number of old buildings and structures in need of rehabilitation, an increasingly diminishing skilled workforce base, and more recently, Homeland Security. To address these challenges, pressures, and issues the capital projects industry needs new methods, improved technologies, a flexible and responsive workforce, and improved business practices. Unfortunately, the industry greatly lags other sectors in exploiting technological advances, and is characterized by vast disparities in business practices and levels of technology application. In addition, the capital projects industry generally is not well prepared for this farreaching response, which extends beyond the boundaries of control for any one organization. All of these issues can, and should, be addressed in a collaborative environment for shared success. FIATECH, a collaborative, non-profit R&D consortium serving the capital projects industry, composed of owners in the private and public sectors, of engineering, procurement, and construction contractors, of research organizations, and of small number of academic institutions, was formed to provide such an integrating entity in partnership with invested stakeholders across the industry (FIATECH, 2004a). One of the primary focuses to date of FIATECH has been the Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Initiative, an initiative open to any companies, consortia, associations, and research institutions interested in addressing any of the various challenges, pressures, and issues affecting the capital projects industry. The principal outcome of this initiative has been the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap – F/CPTR (FIATECH, 2004b), which provides an overarching vision of the future for the capital projects industry. It describes a highly automated project and facility management environment, in, which the operations and systems of all project partners and project functions are instantly and securely interconnected and integrated across all phases of the facility life cycle, and within, which data, information, knowledge, and experience are available on demand, wherever and whenever they are needed to all interested stakeholders. This bold new paradigm envisions, among others: Page 1-1
•
Scenario-based planning systems and modeling tools, to enable rapid and accurate evaluation of multiple project alternatives for facilities and critical civil infrastructure systems in both the public and the private sectors, to find the best balance of quality, value, performance, productivity, and cost and time effectiveness;
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Technology-enabled and automated systems, processes, and equipment, to: − Reduce drastically the time and cost of planning, design, and construction of capital projects, and − Deliver better facilities and critical civil infrastructure systems, which not only will be optimized for performance, functionality, aesthetics, affordability, sustainability, security, and responsiveness to changing business and societal demands, but, which, through the use of technology- and knowledge-enabled workforce, and of new materials, methods, products, and equipment, also will conform better to design and regulatory requirements; will simplify Operation and Maintenance (O&M) and reduce O&M costs; and will extend their service life, flexibility, and adaptability.
1.2
The Context of the Charrette
The context for the charrette was defined by three elements: the charrette drivers, the justification for the charrette, and the charrette format. These are discussed next. 1.2.1
The Drivers for the Charrette
Although some members of the Academic Community have participated in developing the vision model and some of its elements through their participation in industry forums, workshops, and selected project teams, there has not been an explicit and formal effort focused exclusively on establishing the academic perspective on the F/CPTR. As a result, the academic community has not been tapped to its full potential. As a direct response to correct this situation, Dr. Jorge Vanegas, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Dr. James Garrett, from Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. William O’Brien, from the University of Texas at Austin, and Dr. Richard Jackson, Director of the FIATECH Consortium, envisioned: •
Identifying, inviting, and bringing together a maximum of 40 academic experts from multiple disciplines, representing the nine functional elements of the vision model and the seven program plans of the tactical plan for the implementation of the F/CPTR;
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Conducting a multidisciplinary charrette over a three-day period, as an extension of the FIATECH Technology Fall Technology Conference and members meeting, to hold a meaningful and focused dialogue toward strengthening and enhancing the new and bold paradigm of technology for the capital projects industry posed by FIATECH and the F/CPTR; and
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•
Creating an initial alignment between the Academic Community and the FIATECH Consortium around the vision model and the F/CPTR.
Dr. Vanegas, Dr. Garrett, Dr. O’Brien, and Dr. Jackson formed an ad-hoc Steering Committee to realize this vision, and decided to seek funding from the National Science Foundation – NSF (NSF, 2004a), to organize and execute this multidisciplinary event. The proposal, prepared by Dr. Jorge Vanegas as the Principal Investigator and submitted by the Georgia Institute of Technology as the institution of record, was reviewed and funded by the Information Technology and Infrastructure Systems Program Element – ITIS, of the Infrastructure and Information Systems Program – IIS (NSF, 2004b), within the Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems – CMS (NSF, 2004c) of the Engineering Directorate (NSF, 2004d), under the oversight of Dr. Jesus M. de la Garza, Program Director of ITIS. The responsibilities for the planning and execution of the charrette were as follows: •
Dr. Jorge Vanegas, a current member of the FIATECH Technical Advisory Board, and is very familiar with the technology roadmap, was responsible for the execution of all pre-charrette, charrette, and post-charrette activities, and served as the formal charrette host and facilitator.
•
Dr. Ric Jackson, Director of FIATECH, served as the official representative of the FIATECH consortium members, and provided the material to be included in the precharrette readings, in the charrette participant handbook, and in the charrette presentations.
•
Dr. James Garrett and Dr. William O’Brien, who are both also very familiar with the technology roadmap, having participated in an ad-hoc basis in the final development and refinement of the vision model and the tactical plan for implementation of the technology roadmap, were intellectual contributors in the development of the proposal. They both provided technical guidance for the charrette, and assisted in the execution of selected pre-charrette, charrette, and post-charrette activities.
1.2.2
Justification of the Charrette
Over the past several decades, construction researchers have developed a large, international research community in information technology, with several annual conferences organized by: the W-78 Information Technology in Construction group of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction – CIB; various information technology groups of the American Society of Civil Engineers – ASCE; the Association for Computer. Aided Design in Architecture; and specialty conferences such as the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction – ISARC. This international research community has defined a large-scale research agenda in product and process modeling, visualization, data standards, re-use of information, etc. Much of this agenda has found it way into the broad structure of the F/CPTR. For example, the roadmap envisions the re-use of information across the design-construction-operations facility lifecycle, the development of
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information and data standards to support information re-use, and aggressive use of 3D/4D modeling for design and construction coordination. The academic research agenda in information technology developed over the last few decades has strongly influenced the shape of the technology roadmap. While the F/CPTR is broadly consistent with academic thinking about information technology research and development for design and construction, there has been relatively little detailed input by design and construction academics in the development of the roadmap. (Similarly, the roadmap has had little input from academic experts in related areas such as supply chain management/e-commerce technologies.) As academics as a group have had extensive experience developing new technologies and, to a lesser extent, working with industry to implement them, there is considerable potential to tap this collective wisdom and improve the roadmap. The overarching contribution of involving people from the academic realm is to identify the gaps in the knowledge that is required to implement successfully the roadmap. Lacking a capacity to conduct scientific inquiry itself, the Capital Projects industry must turn to researchers in academia and elsewhere to identify gaps in knowledge and conduct research that can establish a scientific basis for the roadmap and its implementation. There are three main areas where the F/CPTR may benefit from closer involvement by members of the academic community: 1. Elaboration of roadmap thrust elements. The F/CPTR contains elements (such as Intelligent Job Site) that are general descriptions of envisioned future practice and some broad goals. These must be elaborated into specific research and development projects. Academic experience on existing projects, as well as knowledge of how to organize projects, can aid roadmap development. 2. Ordering of projects and timelines. Following from the first area, academics can help assess the difficulty of proposed projects and aid in the development of timelines for projects and research programs in F/CPTR elements. In particular, academic experience can help identify low-hanging fruit, identify existing technologies that may be utilized by FIATECH projects, and provide detailed assessment of potential difficulties with other projects. 3. Identification of links between roadmap elements. The F/CPTR contains several elements that are functionally oriented (e.g., Integrated Supply Network, Intelligent Job-Site, Facilities Operations). While these functional areas may contain specialized technologies, it is likely that considerable amounts of technology will be shared among them. Further, certain technologies (such as data standards for information re-use) are likely best developed across functional areas. The academic perspective, which is often technology based, can help identify specific
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links and research and development projects that cross roadmap elements. More broadly, such a cross element perspective can help to affirm the split of functions between elements and identify potential gaps in the current element descriptions. Perhaps more important than specific enhancements to the F/CPTR, a meeting of the academic community around the F/CPTR could help foster long-term collaboration, bringing benefits to both industry and academia. For example, FIATECH can benefit from the continued involvement by the academic community on the development and execution of the F/CPTR, as well as the potential integration of FIATECH ideas into curricula (engendering a workforce for construction that is comfortable with technology). In turn, the academic community can also gain materials for curriculum renewal and more importantly, an opportunity to participate in the development of a broad, national research agenda that can help organize their research efforts, as well as provide a mechanism for dissemination of research to industry practice. The potential benefits of long-term collaboration are great for both groups; a focused workshop is likely the best mechanism to plant the seeds for that collaboration. 1.2.3
The Charrette Format
According to the National Charrette Institute (NCI, 2004), the French word "charrette" means "cart," and is often used to describe the final, intense work effort expended by art and architecture students to meet a project deadline. This use of the term is said to originate from the École des Beaux Arts in Paris during the 19th century, where proctors circulated a cart, or “charrette,â€? to collect final drawings on the way to the design jury, while students frantically put, until the last minute, finishing touches on their work. Today, a charrette is used to refer to an intensive workshop involving people working together under compressed deadlines. It is a collaborative planning or design process that taps into the knowledge, experience, skills, abilities, talents, energies, and synergy of a group of stakeholders, who have a common interest, and who wish to create and support a feasible plan that represents transformative change within the communities they represent. The charrette process combines techniques familiar from brainstorming methods letting ideas flow in an open way, each building upon the suggestions of all participants. The charrette format was selected for this event because a charrette provides an interactive forum in, which stakeholders, representing multiple perspectives on a given topic, come together to understand the complexities of the topic; to propose alternative visions to the initial baseline state of the topic; and to develop, evaluate, and select future plans and options. Charrettes are especially suited to encourage discussion that goes beyond conventional thinking, and that stretches the envelope of the status quo into the realm of new possibilities. They also are an effective means to initiate collaboration among a divers group of parties with common interests.
1.3
Goals and Objectives of the Charrette The initial goals and objectives of the charrette were to:
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1. Identify, invite, and bring together a select multidisciplinary group of academic experts, representing the nine functional elements of the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Vision Model 2. Conduct an intensive charrette, over a three-day period (i.e., 1/2 day, full day, 3/4 day), to − Present and discuss the F/CPTR (i.e., the nine functional elements of the vision model, and selected focus areas of the tactical plan for the implementation of the technology roadmap), with a broader segment of the Academic Community in a formal facilitated structure and setting − Collect, discuss, and record the intellectual, emotional, and instinctual reactions (i.e., reactions from the “Head, Heart, and Gut”) from the Academic Community to the F/CPTR, and synthesize them as a formal response − Collect, discuss, and record in academic clusters breakout groups, the strengths, opportunities, and challenges (i.e., barriers, obstacles, and inhibitors, and barrierbreakers, obstacle-removers, and enablers) associated with the F/CPTR, from an academic perspective, and synthesize them as a formal response − Collect, discuss, and record in academic clusters breakout groups, an in-depth critique of the F/CPTR, from an academic perspective, and synthesize them as a formal response − Develop a research agenda for the Academic Community’s future involvement in supporting and furthering FIATECH’s vision, mission, and goals, and participating in the further development of specific projects within the F/CPTR − Identify synergies between the academic community and the F/CPTR, and propose a model for collaboration in research and education programs, projects, and activities between the Academic Community and the FIATECH Consortium 3. Create alignment between the Academic Community and the FIATECH Consortium around the F/CPTR, that clearly − Establishes a mutual understanding of the implications of the F/CPTR for both the members of the FIATECH Consortium and members of the Academic Community − Identifies existing resources, tools, and knowledge within the members of the FIATECH Consortium and members of the Academic Community, which can be leveraged synergistically, to further the vision, mission, and goals of both communities 4. Note: The presentation and discussion of the current Cyberinfrastructure Program at the Directorate for Engineering of NSF (NSF, 2004e), and the identification of synergies between this program and the F/CPTR, were later added as explicit objectives of the charrette
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1.4
Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact of the Charrette
From an intellectual merit perspective, the proposal to NSF was designed to engage in a meaningful and focused dialogue, and also, in a unique, integrated, and holistic way, academic experts from multiple disciplines that normally do not have many opportunities within, which to interact with each other. Explicit efforts were made to invite members of the academic community in Construction Engineering and Management, Civil and Environmental Engineering, other Engineering disciplines such as Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and other affinity disciplines such as Public Policy, Management, Architecture, and Computer Science. The Steering Committee assembled brought excellent qualifications, experience, and demonstrated capabilities in the F/CPTR, and was fully committed to the successful achievement of the charrette’s goals and execution plan. The charrette execution plan proposed was conceived and organized to maximize the breadth and depth of the academic response to the F/CPTR, and was innovative and creative in its structure and delivery format. From a broader impact perspective, the proposal to NSF was designed to engage actively the academic community toward strengthening and enhancing the new and bold paradigm of technology for the capital projects industry posed by FIATECH. This active engagement of the academic community in implementing this paradigm will enhance and strengthen undoubtedly the infrastructure for research and education in the knowledge domains addressed within the vision model, initially within the broad and diverse audience targeted for participation in the charrette, and subsequently within the academic community at large. In addition, it was anticipated that the outcomes of the charrette would provide a solid foundation for the Academic Community’s future involvement in supporting and furthering FIATECH’s vision, mission, and goals, and for greater and closer levels of collaboration in research and education programs, projects, and activities between the Academic Community and the FIATECH Consortium members.
1.5
Charrette Execution Plan The execution plan for the proposed charrette had three distinct phases: •
Phase I included all the pre-charrette activities, which were completed from June 17, 2004, to October 13, 2004.
•
Phase II included all the Charrette activities, which were held over a three-day period, October 13 – 15, 2004, at the Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel in Houston, Texas, with 43 participants from academic institutions in the U.S., and from several countries around the world. The complete list of participants is included in Appendix 1.
•
Phase III included all the post-charrette activities, which were completed from October 15, 2004, to November 1, 2004.
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An additional set of follow-up activities was added as an extension to the charrette execution plan. The specific details of each of these phases are presented next. 1.5.1
Phase I – Pre-charrette Activities
Dr. Jorge Vanegas was responsible for the execution of these activities, with support from the members of the Charrette Steering Committee. •
Task 1 – Establishment of a Web Site for the Charrette: http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/ This task focused on establishing the official charrette web site, which has been maintained and updated throughout the pre-charrette, charrette, and post-charrette activities, as a means of: − Announcing the charrette to a broad audience, and inviting interested parties to attend. − Communicating with charrette participants for all pre-charrette, charrette, and post-charrette activities. − Disseminating the charrette results to a broad audience within the Academic Community, research organizations in the public and in the private sectors, and within the capital projects industry. This web site will be maintained for at least six months after the charrette, and after this period, all content will be preserved as an archival record of this event.
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Task 2 – Identification of Charrette Participants and Logistics. This task focused on: − Identifying charrette participants, from a multidisciplinary pool of experts representing all the program element areas of the technology roadmap. The target number of participants for the charrette was 40. Although most of the participants were anticipated to be from the U.S., a select number of international participants were invited to provide the international perspective. Targeted disciplines to be represented at the charrette included: Construction Engineering and Management, Civil and Environmental Engineering, other Engineering disciplines such as Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and other affinity disciplines such as Public Policy, Management, Architecture, and Computer Science − Issuing a formal public invitation to targeted charrette participants. The announcement was disseminated within established academic networks of researchers and email distribution lists, within the various disciplines relevant to any of the functional elements of the vision model. A special effort was made to ensure that the announcement reached academic researchers from traditionally
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underrepresented groups in science and engineering. The formal public invitation and charrette registration forms are included in Appendix 2. − Securing the charrette location and logistic support infrastructure. To enhance the potential interaction between industry and the academic community, the charrette was planned to be held immediately following the FIATECH Fall Technology Conference and members meeting, at the Doubletree Hotel Houston – Post Oak, Houston, Texas, on October 13 (4 hrs. - afternoon), October 14 (8 hrs. all day), and October 15 (6 hrs – morning and early afternoon), 2004. All logistic aspects of the charrette, including securing a meeting room, a block of four breakout rooms, meals, and lodging for the charrette participants, were coordinated among Ms. Lisa Baxter, Dr. Vanegas’ Administrative Assistant, Ms. Nicole Testa, the Assistant Director of Operations and Business Development for FIATECH, and Ms. Kimberly Shipman, from the event management staff of the Doubletree Hotel. •
Task 3 – Development of Pre-charrette Readings, Formal Input Sheets, and Electronic Forum. This task focused on: − Identifying, reviewing, and synthesizing selected reading material, which the charrette participants were asked to read prior to the charrette. These readings provided a common baseline for the facilitated discussions that were held within various sessions of the charrette. The reading material can be found at: http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/index7.htm − Designing, developing, and preparing a set of Formal Input Sheets, which the charrette participants were asked to complete prior to the charrette. Results from the completed questionnaires were posted prior to the beginning of the charrette, so they could be used within the facilitated discussions. The formal input sheets can be found at: http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/index9.htm The formal input sheets are included in Appendix 3.
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Task 4 – Development of the Charrette Participant Handbook and Presentations Materials. This task focused on: − Designing, developing, preparing, and duplicating the Participant Handbook that all participants in the charrette will receive on the day the charrette starts. − Designing, developing, and preparing the Presentation Materials (e.g., PowerPoint slides) that will be used in selected portions of the individual sessions of the charrette.
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Task 5 – Development and Execution of an Electronic Forum. This task focused on designing, developing, and executing an Electronic Forum to provide an opportunity to anyone who could not attend the charrette, to chat with the Steering Committee and other interested participants, and provide formal input on the F/CPTR prior to the charrette. The first eForum was held from 12 noon to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, September 1, 2004. The second eForum was held from 12 noon to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, September 29, 2004.
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1.5.2 Phase II – Charrette Activities Dr. Jorge Vanegas was responsible for the execution of these activities, with support from the members of the Charrette Steering Committee. Table 1 shows a summary of the charrette activities. Table 1.1. Summary of Charrette Activities Pre-charrette Activities Session 0 ÒOn-site Registration of Charrette ParticipantsÓ 11:30 a.m. Ğ 1:00 p.m. (90 minutes) Charrette Activities, Wednesday, O ctober 13 Session 1 ÒEstablishing the Point of Departure for the CharretteÓ 1:00 p.m. Ğ 2:15 p.m. (75 minutes) Coffee Break; 2:15 p.m. Ğ 2:30 p.m. (15 minutes) Session 2 ÒThe FIATECH Technology Roadmap for Capital Projects Ğ Vision Model and Tactical Plan, and the NSF Cyber Infrastructure ProgramÓ 2:30 p.m. Ğ 3:30 p.m. (60 minutes) Coffee Break; 3:30 p.m. Ğ 3:45 p.m. (15 minutes) Session 3 ÒAcademic Community Reactions to the FIATECH RoadmapÓ 3:45 p.m. Ğ 5:00 p.m. (75 minutes) Adjourn for the Day at 5:00 p.m. Charrette Activities, Thursday, October 14 Session 4 ÒPresentations by Keynote SpeakersÓ 8:00 a.m. Ğ 9:00 a.m. (60 minutes) Session 5A ÒAcademic Expertise Cluster Discussions of the FIATECH Roadmap ĞPart 1Ó 9:00 a.m. Ğ 10:45 a.m. (105 minutes) Coffee Break; 10:45 a.m. Ğ 11:00 a.m. (15 minutes) Session 5B ÒFeedback from Academic Exp ertise Cluster Discussions of the FIATECH RoadmapÓ 11:00 a.m. Ğ 12:00 noon (60 minutes) Lunch Break; 12:00 noon Ğ 1:15 p.m. (75 minutes) Session 6 ÒPresentations by Keynote SpeakerÓ 1:15 p.m. Ğ 2:00 p.m. (45 minutes) Session 7A ÒAcademic Expertise Cluster InĞdepth Critiques of the FIATECH RoadmapÓ 2:00 p.m. Ğ 3:45 p.m. (105 minutes) Coffee Break; 3:45 p.m. Ğ 4:00 p.m. (15 minutes) Adjourn for the Day at 4:00 p.m. Charrette Activities, Friday, October 15 Special Session ÒOverview of FIATECHÓ 7:45 a.m. Ğ 8:00 a.m. (15 minutes) Session 7B ÒFeedback from Academic Exp ertise Cluster InĞdepth Critiques of the FIATECH RoadmapÓ 8:00 a.m. Ğ 9:00 a.m. (60 minutes) Session 8 ÒFunding Opportunities in CyberinfrastructureÓ 9:00 a.m. Ğ 9:50 a.m. (50 minutes) Coffee Break; 9:50 a.m. Ğ 10:10 a.m. (20 minutes) Session 9 ÒEstablishing a Research Agenda for the Academic CommunityÓ 10:10 a.m. Ğ 12:00 noon (110 minutes) Lunch Break; 12:00 noon Ğ 1:00 p.m. (60 minutes) Session 10 ÒEstablishing a Model for CollaborationÓ 1:00 p.m. Ğ 2:15 p.m. (75 minutes) Session 11 ÒClosing RemarksÓ 2:15 p.m. Ğ 2:30 p.m. (15 minutes) Charrette Adjourned at 2:30 p.m.
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The final synthesis of the proposed research agenda resulting from the charrette is included in Section 3. All the supporting documentation is included in Appendices 4 – 12, which include the consolidated material captured prior and during the charrette, through the formal input sheets, and through the facilitated discussions at the charrette. •
Appendix 4 – Final Charrette Agenda
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Appendix 5 – Summary of Charrette Activities
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Appendix 6 – Drivers and Expectations
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Appendix 7 – Reactions
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Appendix 8 – Strengths, Opportunities, and Challenges
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Appendix 9 – Critiques
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Appendix 10 –Research Agenda Development
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Appendix 11 –Commitments
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Appendix 12 –Opportunities for Collaboration
1.5.3
Phase III – Post-Charrette Activities
Dr. Jorge Vanegas was responsible for the execution of these activities, with support from the members of the Charrette Steering Committee, and especially, with support from Dr. Annie Pearce. •
Task 1 – Final Processing of Charrette Results. This task focused on preparing this final report. This report was submitted to the NSF as the official charrette sponsor on November 1, 2004. It was disseminated broadly among all the charrette participants, the FIATECH Consortium members, and the academic community at large.
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Task 2 – Posting the Final Report on the Official Charrette Web Site. This task focused on posting the final report on the official charrette web site as a means of ample dissemination of the charrette results, and announcing the report in the same academic networks of researchers and email distribution lists used to invite interested parties to the charrette.
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Task 3 – Preparing Other Scholarly Products. This task will focus, as an extension to the charrette, on preparing, as means of further ample dissemination of the charrette results:
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− At least one technical paper, to be submitted for review and possible publication in a peer-refereed journal, such as the ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management − At least two technical papers and presentations, to be submitted for review, possible presentation at a technical congress, conference, or symposium, and possible publication in the event’s proceedings, publication, such as the 2005 Construction Congress in San Diego, CA − At least one session, panel, and/or follow-up workshop proposal, to be submitted for review and possible implementation at a technical congress, conference, or symposium, such as the 2005 Computing Congress in Cancun, Mexico
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SECTION 2 The Point of Departure: The FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap (F/CPTR) This section contains a brief synopsis of the most relevant material provided to the Charrette Participants courtesy of FIATECH. This material can be found on-line at: http://www.fiatech.org/projects/roadmap/cptri.htm.
2.1
Background
The Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Initiative is led by FIATECH. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Construction Industry Institute (CII) created the FIATECH concept in 1999 as a breakthrough opportunity for the industry. FIATECH’s mission is to achieve significant cycle-time and lifecycle cost reductions and efficiencies in capital projects from concept to design, construction, operation, and including decommissioning and dismantling of facilities. The idea of Fully Integrated and Automated Project Processes (FIAPP) was key to the formation and mission of FIATECH. The initiative was officially launched in October 2001, when a group of experts from the capital projects industry met in San Antonio, Texas to begin development of a comprehensive technology Research and Development (R&D) agenda for the industry. The result of that workshop was a first draft of the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap (F/CPTR), published in January 2002. The roadmap is a tool in a larger four-phase process aimed at bringing the industry together to accelerate progress in delivering technologies to pressing industry needs. Phase I focused on the development of a draft roadmap, which was reviewed and refined in Phase II. Phase III focused on developing specific project plans for the implementation of R&D to achieve the roadmap goals. Finally, Phase IV is currently focused on the implementation of the plans initiated in Phase III. The generation of the initial roadmap was a result of a structured process with strong industry participation. The process was designed to: 1. Document a “current state assessment” of the industry from technology and business perspectives; 2. Develop a “future state vision” that addressed the needs identified in the current state assessment; 3. Develop a broad slate of technology-oriented goals and requirements to achieve the vision; and 4. Prioritize the goals and identify an initial set of near-term actions to initiate progress towards those goals.
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The process used a hierarchical model of the basic functions of a capital project as an organizing framework for working through topics in each stage of the process. More specifically, the process started with the establishment of a broad foundation based on an understanding of the current state of construction functions, and on a set of initial visions for a future state, along with high-level goals and requirements to achieve these visions. The process continued with a convergence to a strategy, through prioritization and refinement of the initial visions, goals, and requirements, and the development of the final vision. Then, the process moved from strategy to the development of tactical plans, through an initial set of high-priority projects that are the first enablers towards the full implementation of the vision, and of detailed plans for each project. To seek comments for improvement and to gain buy-in, the first draft of the Capital Projects Technology Roadmap and the vision model were reviewed by the FIATECH membership and briefed at selected industry forums (e.g., DatatechPlant 2002, FIATECH Members Meeting, CERF, DBIA, CII Board of Advisors, AEC Systems, and others). These reviews served the dual purpose of educating the industry community on the roadmap initiative and refining the roadmap’s content and priorities to support planning for implementation. Through this process, the vision model matured to an accepted instrument for communicating the goal and the challenge. Subsequent iterations through the review process led to a validated model as a conceptual framework for an “integrated capital projects system” able to execute and manage a project from the inception of requirements, to design and construction, through operation of the facility or structure, and to disposition at the end of its useful life. The next step in developing the roadmap and the vision model was the development of a planning framework to implement the vision. In November 2002, FIATECH convened more than 40 representatives from the industry, government, and academic communities in Lansdowne, Virginia to develop specific project plans for implementing R&D to achieve the goals defined in the roadmap. The objective of the workshop was to create a clearly defined “path forward” for launching of the industry-consensus R&D agenda, with cross-industry teams chartered to lead implementation of focused programs. This workshop also had a secondary agenda. Because the San Antonio workshop occurred only weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, the new realities of Homeland Security were not addressed in the initial draft roadmap. Recognizing that these new realities must be addressed in any set of requirements for industry-wide technology planning, the Virginia workshop devoted specific attention to Homeland Security issues.
2.2
The FIATECH Vision Model
The ultimate goal of the F/CPTR Initiative is the delivery of the right tools and systems to support the present and future needs of the capital projects industry. 2.2.1
The Vision Fully integrated and highly automated project processes coupled with radically advanced technologies across all phases and functions of the project/facility lifecycle.
The vision of the future for the capital projects industry is of a highly automated project and facility management environment integrated across all phases of the facility lifecycle. Page 3-2
Information is available on demand, wherever and whenever it is needed to all interested stakeholders. This integrated environment will enable all project partners and project functions to instantly and securely "plug together" their operations and systems. Interconnected, automated systems, processes, and equipment will drastically reduce the time and cost of planning, design, and construction. Scenario-based planning systems and modeling tools will enable rapid, accurate evaluation of all options, resulting in the selection of the best balance of capability and cost-effectiveness. New materials and methods will reduce the time and cost of construction and greatly extend facility performance, functionality, aesthetics, affordability, sustainability, and responsiveness to changing business demands. This vision is captured in the guiding model for the F/CPTR, as shown in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1. The FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Vision Model (Source: FIATECH, 2004b)
This model depicts a completely integrated structure composed of nine critical elements and can be thought of as a virtual enterprise for the future. The nine elements are:
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1. Scenario-based Project Planning 2. Automated Design 3. Integrated, Automated Procurement & Supply Network 4. Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site 5. Intelligent Self-maintaining and Repairing Operational Facility 6. Real-time Project and Facility Management, Coordination and Control 7. New Materials, Methods, Products & Equipment 8. Technology- & Knowledge-enabled Workforce 9. Lifecycle Data Management & Information Integration This model provides a high-level context for the development of critical high-impact technologies and systems to advance and integrate the various processes involved at each stage of the project/facility life cycle. Much of the required technology is anticipated to come from outside the industry, in particular from the Information Technology (IT) sector. The F/CPTR Initiative, and specifically the F/CPTR, provide a mechanism for the industry to reach consensus on technology needs and priorities, a forum for conveying requirements and priorities to the technology developer community, and a mandate to accelerate the delivery of needed components and integrated systems that better support the nation’s capital assets. 2.2.2
Vision and Goals of the Elements of the Model
The nine functional elements that come together within the vision model for the F/CPTR act as an integrated solution set, with each element totally interoperable across the enterprise and over the project life cycle. Within each element of the model, specific strategic goals drive the development and execution of the tactical plans for achieving the vision. These visions and goals are explained next. 2.2.2.1
Element 1 – Scenario-Based Project Planning
The future project planning system will provide interactive evaluation of project alternatives, enabling creation of conceptual designs and project plans that best meet the needs of all stakeholders. This collaborative planning environment will provide full awareness of the impacts of decisions on costs, schedules, and lifecycle performance. The system will provide the initial input to a comprehensive project plan and specifications, ultimately captured in an Asset Lifecycle Information System, to guide subsequent project designs and support downstream project functions. The Asset Lifecycle Information System is a foundation of the future state vision, serving as the repository for all design and planning information and the interface for all systems and applications.
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⇒ Goals for Element 1: From a technological standpoint, the goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to achieve a fully automated project planning and conceptual design environment. From an operational viewpoint, the goal is to provide a level of automation and human interaction that best serves all the stakeholders by providing the ability to review project planning options and scenarios quickly and interactively, resulting in the highest value business-based project plan. All of the data and information generated in this phase of the project will become part of an Asset Lifecycle Information System (ALIS). This system is the interface for all project operations, applications, and information flows and must be maintained and validated throughout the lifecycle of the project. 2.2.2.2
Element 2 – Automated Design:
Current and emerging capabilities in 3-D design, analytical modeling and simulation, intelligent systems and distributed information management offer the opportunity to create a truly integrated and automated project design environment. In this environment, all tools will work together as an interconnected system that provides all of the functionality needed to develop and validate detailed designs for every aspect of a project based on the design criteria. This integrated design environment will dramatically reduce the time and cost in moving from concept to construction execution through automation of complex design engineering tasks. It will also greatly reduce errors and liability through comprehensive, automated design optimization and verification. Optimization would include a variety of options including total installed cost, total lifecycle cost, and plant output. The system will enable design teams to interact with the customer and other stakeholders to assist in the conceptual design process, starting with the capturing of requirements and preferences for design, while automatically processing options in a mathematically accurate, scenario-based visualization environment. Modeling and simulation tools linked to the automated design system will enable quantitative evaluation to assess the cost, performance, and risks of each option, including intangibles such as aesthetics. ⇒ Goals for Element 2: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to expedite advancement of automated design vision to improve cost-efficiency, enhance the lifecycle value of the design work products, and enable interoperability among entities associated with a project's lifecycle, resulting in significant cost savings and/or profit. The goal is to accelerate the development and deployment of an integrated suite of design advisors, automated design tools and processes in the capital projects arena that increase cost efficiency and improve project performance. Key issues include integration of detailed design with the other vision diagram elements; design reuse; design requirements integration and management; automated design advisors; and industry-specific modeling and simulation tools. This functional element will address automated design and the role it plays within the total project lifecycle, and will capture and provide industry feedback for integration into the ALIS to support total management of project performance. Page 3-5
2.2.2.3
Element 3 – Integrated, Automated Procurement and Supply Network
The procurement system of the future will be seamlessly integrated with the project design system, project management and control system, finance system, and the global supply network. This will enable project teams to optimize work packages, select products, identify qualified suppliers, and procure the best products at the best prices with complete confidence and ability to deliver on time and within budget. These linked systems will automatically track every order through delivery to the job site, orchestrate the flow of resources for optimal build efficiency and provide instant visibility of progress and variances against technical, schedule, and cost requirements throughout the selection, delivery and payment processes. The opportunity for the integrated procurement and supply system is to enable automating sourcing and supply chain interaction, from determination of needs to delivery of tospec orders on time and within budget to point of need. The vision is centered on a project design system that seamlessly interconnects with the supply network and enables rapid completion of detailed facility designs. The system will enable automated specification of procured items based on parameters defined by the project planning system (cost, schedule, quantity) and by the design system (technical requirements). The output of the design system and the procurement system will be a total procurement package that accurately specifies all needed materials and components, cost and schedule. Automated and integrated tools to support bid solicitation, vendor certification, source selection, and contract negotiation will slash procurement cost and time. The supply network will be directly integrated with the capital project design and management systems, providing continuous visibility into status and progress of every supplier activity. ⇒ Goals for Element 3: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to identify and pursue business process improvements, capabilities and technologies to advance the development of fully integrated supply chain, procurement, project controls and financial system that provide the real-time collaboration and optimization across the entire supply network. This element will: o Define the business processes for supply chain production, logistics, and information flows to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks and highlight improvement opportunities o Develop and document best practices (including validation) o Develop requirements for tools necessary to support integrated and automated business processes o Evaluate tools identified in the marketplace and develop additional tools as required o Create open standards as required for the integrating and automating of procurement and supply chain processes
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The vision defines a globally integrated supply network that will securely deliver stock and custom assemblies and materials as dictated by the master project schedule for respective construction steps, reducing the need for on-site storage. Automated procurement systems will coordinate delivery in accordance with the evolving demands of the master schedule. Standardized construction items will become commodity products designed for rapid build. The principles of lean manufacturing and demand-based product pull that have transformed the manufacturing sector will become the underpinning of the procurement and staging functions for capital projects. The ultimate vision for the integrated supply network relies on accurate and complete electronic procurement packages including 3-D product definitions, product specifications and supporting analytical models. This product data will be output from the design system and delivered to the vendors and fabricators along with cost and schedule requirements. The global electronic procurement network will automatically identify and solicit qualified bidders and support evaluation of source capabilities and assured ability to deliver. The project management system will interface with the suppliers' systems to maintain continuous visibility of progress, enabling the project managers to identify any schedule or quality issues as soon as they arise. This will also enable the project team to collaborate with suppliers to solve problems before they impact the project schedule. Similarly, the system will enable rapid creation of new delivery schedules validated against supplier capabilities should there be changes to site construction schedules. The master schedule, linked to the Asset Lifecycle Information System, will be continuously synchronized with the actual progress of the project. The site monitoring and tracking system will compare daily construction progress against the plan and coordinate the continuous flow of materials and assemblies to the point of need. The Asset Lifecycle Information System will continuously be updated to reflect actual status, while flagging any variances for management attention. The site asset tracking and control system will enable workers to instantly locate the resources they need and get them delivered for immediate use. The capital facilities industry will interact in a distributed electronic commerce environment that enables suppliers and subcontractors across the world to seamlessly "plug in" (with appropriate security) to any project, identify business opportunities, and exchange requirements and bid information. The integrated procurement system will automatically identify and solicit qualified bidders, evaluate source capabilities, and ascertain ability to deliver. Suppliers of materials, parts, equipment, tools, and other products will maintain on-line knowledge bases of their products complete with performance specifications, tolerances, cost, supply lead times, options, available quantities) and material properties captured in "multi-D" product models that designers can plug into the Asset Lifecycle Information System as it evolves.
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The product design system will output a total procurement package including bill of materials, schedule, cost targets, delivery requirements, and performance specifications for every element of the project. The procurement system will use this package to canvass the supplier community, solicit and evaluate bids, make source selection recommendations, place orders, and track status through to delivery and acceptance. The status of any items or material on the project critical path will be automatically updated at appropriate intervals to assure that the supplier is on schedule. The system will alert the project team to any schedule or cost variances, facilitating fast problem resolution and mitigating risks before they impact critical milestones. The asset tracking and control system will deliver goods and services to the site via demand-based "pull" and enable every worker to instantly access the resources they need for the task at hand. The system will have access to databases of supplier data to aid in the sourcing process, including historical performance, technical and management qualifications, quality ratings, small/disadvantaged business status, and similar parameters. 2.2.2.4
Element 4 – Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site
The project site and build processes of the future will be re-engineered to make use of emerging information and automation technologies to minimize capital facility delivery costs (labor, material and equipment), facility deliver time, and life-cycle costs. Linked to the master facility model, construction project management systems will continuously monitor the job site for compliance with cost, schedule, material placement and quality, technical performance, and safety. These advances will reduce construction time to a fraction of today's averages by more effectively orchestrating and closely monitoring the use of labor, equipment and materials on the job site, and will thus provide significant savings through schedule compression with less rework for construction operations. Construction sites will become more "intelligent" as materials, components, tools, equipment, and people become elements of a fully sensed and monitored environment. Location and status of all materials, equipment, personnel, and other resources will be continuously tracked on site, thus enabling a "pull" environment where needed resources are delivered on demand. Automation of construction processes will augment manual labor for hazardous and labor-intensive tasks such as welding and high-steel work. Construction job sites will be wirelessly networked with sensors and communications technologies that enable technology- and knowledge-enabled construction workers to perform their jobs quickly and correctly. Because the facilities and construction operations are closely monitored and represented within a master facility model, downstream facility operations will be made more effective with the available of much better documentation about the history and current state of the facility. ⇒ Goals for Element 4: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to deliver on the vision for an Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site (IACJS), as described above. To achieve this goal, a concerted and systematic effort to identify, develop, deploy, and evaluate the impacts of, the needed IACJS systems,
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components, standards, and deployment strategies. With such an investment, construction practitioners who wish to select and deploy IACJS technologies for use on a specific project can much more easily do so and have a high degree of confidence that the technologies will yield reduced schedules and costs of construction operations. IACJS technology providers will also benefit from this effort and participate in the development of the standards, system architectures and system components 2.2.2.5
Element 5 – Intelligent Self-maintaining and Repairing Operational Facility
Future capital facilities will be programmed, designed and constructed to be an intelligent integrated system of systems. These intelligent systems will utilize the data flow from selfmonitored equipment and systems to manage the actions necessary to ensure conditions and performance necessary to enable safe, secure, and continuously optimized facility operations. Data from these systems will be utilized in the Asset Lifecycle Information System (ALIS) to give facility owners/operators/service providers powerful capabilities for determining the best response to changes in business and/or environmental requirements to ensure continued support for the facility for the intended use, now and in the future. Facility systems will be totally integrated to utilize data generated during operation to automatically and autonomously activate built-in mechanisms to perform required maintenance and/or repair functions. If necessary, instructions will be automatically communicated to external support systems when the required actions are beyond the capabilities of the built-in mechanisms. A comprehensive network of sensors and decision support systems will provide continuous visibility of operational status and performance, providing trends for systems and flagging problems with recommendations for external intervention. Information from the embedded systems will provide feedback to future programming/design/ construction operations in support of the business and/or regulatory environment to ensure optimal facility utilization, even during response to crises. ⇒ Goals for Element 5: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to deliver costeffective solutions, adaptable to specific operations, to determine optimum facility operating conditions, maintain operations within the performance envelope, provide real-time condition assessment, predict problems before they arise, and enhance performance of the asset over its life cycle. O&M decisions and service functions will be based on a fully integrated consideration of all lifecycle, environmental, cost, and performance factors supported by accurate, current, and complete data captured from the installed technologies and fed to the Asset Lifecycle Information System. Self-maintaining, self-repairing facilities, systems, and equipment will enable safe, secure, continuously optimized operations with near-zero downtime and with no undue effects to health, safety, or the environment.
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These systems will feed information into the Asset Lifecycle Information System making the data available in every phase of the lifecycle, from project planning and design to construction and to eventual facility decommissioning. The integration of this data fabric will enable better decision making at all levels and through all stakeholders. 2.2.2.6
Element 6 – Real-time Project and Facility Management, Coordination and Control
Future management systems will empower integrated orchestration and control of Project and Facility processes, and will be a tool that provides continuous visibility to all plans and tasks throughout the planning, design, construction and facility life cycle. The result will be a wellorchestrated series of interrelated tasks and activities optimized for efficiency and results, coordinating resources and plans in an error-free fashion, radically reducing the time and cost required to move from planning to design to construction to operation. The system will interface with the Master Facility Life-Cycle Model, created at project inception and extended through the project and facility life cycle. It will link to the pervasive sensor network at the project and facility levels, which will provide accurate, continuous, realtime visibility of progress and status of all activities. Progress and performance of every activity will be monitored and deviations will automatically be flagged for management attention, allowing project and facility managers to fully understand the impacts of problems or changes, assess risks, and manage changes throughout the life cycle. Thus, productivity and accountability will be improved in real time, and the automated monitoring system will create a historical experience database of plans and outcomes. This can be used to optimize all types of processes for future projects or facilities. ⇒ Goals for Element 6: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to identify and pursue the data models, business processes and functions required to advance the development of a fully integrated facility planning and management system that can be seen as the real-time system across the design, construction and facility life cycle. It is critical that this system can be adopted throughout the capital projects and facilities industry. Specific objectives include: o Define the business processes involved in the project and facility life cycle o Develop requirements for tools necessary to support the business processes o Evaluate tools identified in the marketplace and develop additional tools as required o Develop and document best practices (including validation) o Create open standards as required for the data model and for business processes and best practices
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2.2.2.7
Element 7 – New Materials, Methods, Products, and Equipment
New materials, methods, and equipment will enable rapid, low-cost construction of modularized, lightweight structures in a fraction of current time spans by applying highly engineered fabrication and assembly methods. Flexible and "programmable" properties will enable new generations of stronger, lighter materials to be easily transported, placed, formed, cured, and attached with little or no temporary support. New and improved processes engineered for efficiency will radically reduce labor and material costs. Self-assembling robotically controlled, and automatically activating components will replace the most troublesome of today's processes. ⇒ Goals for Element 7: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to enable rapid, low-cost construction of modularized, lightweight structures in a fraction of current time spans. This will be accomplished by applying automated equipment and highly engineered assembly methods with zero waste and zero rework. Advances in protectants and coatings will extend the life of many material systems. New high-performance material systems will be rapidly inserted into use and application via expedited testing, certification, and approval processes. 2.2.2.8
Element 8 – Technology– and Knowledge–Enabled Workforce
Skilled and committed workers, enabled by technology and empowered by "knowledge at their fingertips" will perform at new levels of productivity. Workers in all functions of the capital projects enterprise will be enabled by technology that assists them in doing their jobs more effectively. Traditional divisions of labor and skills will be redefined, from the top floor to the trenches, to broaden the capabilities and value of every worker in the emerging team-based project environment. Redefined organizational allegiances and incentives will result in a more stable and reliable labor supply for all of the industry. A "knowledge supply chain" will assure the ready and consistent supply of the right workers with the right skills. ⇒ Goals for Element 8: The goals of this element of the F/CPTR are currently under development and were not available prior to the charrette. 2.2.2.9
Element 9 – Life Cycle Data Management & Information Integration
Execution of future capital projects and operation of capital facilities will be radically enhanced by seamless access to all data, information, and knowledge needed to make optimal decisions in every phase and function of the capital project/facility lifecycle. This element provides a foundation layer for the highly automated project and facility management environment envisioned in the Roadmap. This element encompasses the broadest vision of all the F/CPTR elements: •
Data (and information or knowledge) may be "structured", such as in tables or databases, or "unstructured", such as in the form of documents, graphical models or other "packages" containing snapshots-in-time of aggregated information. Data will be self-describing; making its content, the container, the intended purpose or use, and its history, all available to other systems, processes or equipment that may use it. Data Page 3-11
will be managed by applying the concepts of aggregation, encapsulation, content, consolidation, and validation. •
All data that drives and supports capital projects industry processes will be safely stored and instantly accessible and retrievable on demand, in user-specified form, with complete assurance of security for sensitive data. Data will be available to authorized users in accordance with rigorous standards for data security and integrity. Future capital projects and facility managers will have continuous access to the right data and information, at the right time, and in the right format.
•
Systems, processes and equipment will be enabled with a complete capability to capture pertinent data relative to their function and state within the life cycle of the facility and construction processes and will provide requested data to the enterprise knowledge system in the form of accurate information delivered in transparently useable forms. Interoperable systems will operate seamlessly as components of the integrated enterprise. Developed based on agreed standards and protocols for data and information exchange, they will plug-and-play without intervention, and provide seamless access to knowledge bases and legacy data. Legacy data concerns will be eliminated through knowledge-based systems that transparently extract data from existing systems.
•
The shared or common data on, which the industry operates will be managed as a shared asset, validated by subject matter experts, assuring the provision of needed information (such as regulations, units of measure, expert rule bases, and metadata) and eliminating non-value-added information management tasks. Knowledge bases spanning every relevant domain will be populated with validated reference data and managed in a secure yet easily accessible structure. The availability of such shared knowledge bases will reduce the cost and time for accessing and organizing commonly used data.
•
Connectivity and interoperability of project/enterprise systems is key to the vision of the future. Different systems and applications will be able to exchange and share data without the need for manual translation or re-entry, enabling a true "enter once, use many times" information environment. Connectivity throughout the extended enterprise will enable rapid integration of partners and suppliers to form teams for new projects as well as seamless integration of long-term supply and support networks.
•
Techniques and tools such as model-based information management will enable complete integration of data, information, and knowledge with the products, processes, and systems with, which they are associated. For example, all supplied products and equipment will come equipped with a high-fidelity virtual model embedded (or linked to) all relevant information about the product. This information will include geometry, performance specifications, analytical models, failure modes, usage instructions, and similar data that facilitate project planning, design, procurement, construction, operation, maintenance, and life cycle support. These
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"knowledge objects" will be able to be directly "plugged in" to the master life cycle system, while retaining linkages to external information sources to enable updates when the external information is modified. •
The master life cycle information repository for a specific project or facility will be an electronic instance of a facility that evolves over time (i.e. as projects are conducted to modify the facility). It will contain all versions, decisions, deletions and results relating to that facility, including data required for private, internal use by domain experts, for example as they develop alternatives and what-if scenarios prior to a business or technical decision point. The master life cycle information repository will support a fully integrated facility planning, business modeling, and simulation and project management environment. Information germane to the facility will be continuously refreshed through the use of trusted work processes designed to accurately update electronic data.
•
The master life cycle information repository will automatically ripple approved changes (i.e. "exposed" or external views of data) to affected project stakeholders and systems. A unified industry knowledge management framework and supporting applications will enable collection and integration of project experience and data in machine-readable form. This knowledge base will be continuously updated and applied by expert systems to support all technical and business functions of the enterprise, assuring that decisions are optimized for best results.
•
The master life cycle information repository will support the rapid generation of procurement packages and supporting schedule and financial data when designs are approved, and the automatic dissemination of the design and QA packages to project team members and qualified suppliers and vendors. Integration with financial reporting systems will provide project managers with one-click visibility into the status of any task or issue, and automatically variances for management action.
•
The master life cycle information repository will also include the total construction execution plan data, complete with specifications, bills of material, time-phased labor/material/equipment staging, and resource allocations. It will support the simulation of every task and step in the construction process with an accurate time component, turning the 3-D facility model into a complete, 4-D living simulation. This will enable planners to optimize construction sequencing to drastically reduce build time and cost, and assure safety and security of operations.
•
Integration of sensing and monitoring functions will enable the master life cycle information repository to be continuously updated with as-built information, providing complete visibility of progress against plans and budgets. It will also enable immediate identification of problems such as misrouted material/equipment, improper assembly, and safety and security incidents. During design and construction, and when the construction project is complete, the master life cycle information repository will be available to the facility operation and maintenance function for use as a facility control model, supporting routine operations and maintenance activities
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as well as planning and execution of facilities upgrades and other actions downstream in the life cycle. ⇒ Goals for Element 9: The goal of this element of the F/CPTR is to create the foundation for a life cycle data management and information integration environment of the future that is adopted throughout the capital projects and facilities industry, centered on the need to deliver the right information, at the right time, to the right place. Specific goals include: o To provide the technical framework for both data management and information exchange that will be used by all business processes and applications developed in the other Roadmap Elements. o To assist with the creation and maintenance of industry-wide shared or common reference data, as required for the other Roadmap Elements. o To enable and motivate individual organizations to accelerate the process to create and implement an instance of the technical framework for their specific project or facility, to act as the master facility lifecycle system for that project or facility in support of a fully integrated facility planning and management environment.
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SECTION 3 A Proposed Research Agenda This section contains a synthesis of a research agenda based on the input from the participants in the Charrette. The full set of results, as captured during the charrette, is included in Appendix 10.
3.1
General Overview
The F/CPTR initiative represents a significant statement of interest and ambition on the part of the industry groups that have contributed to its development to date. In its current form, the scope and detail of the roadmap are essentially congruent with earlier position papers, such as those written under the umbrellas of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI), and the International Standards Organization Technical Committee 184 Sub Committee 4 (also known as STEP, Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data), and others. Furthermore, the F/CPTR can be seen as an evolutionary step in the quest for the development of a fully integrated and technology enabled environment for the delivery and operation of capital facilities. It provides a good point of departure, and also of reference, for both practitioners from industry and members of the academic community, who are interested in research, development, demonstration, validation, deployment, implementation, and adoption of new technologies. Using the model of research and technology diffusion presented by Dr. de la Garza at the opening of the charrette, the F/CPTR can be at the center of the cycle of research to development to demonstration to deployment to research, to move the capital projects industry from its current state, to the vision state posed by FIATECH, as shown in Figure 3.1. Deployment
Demonstration
Current State of the Capital Projects Industry (Status Quo)
Future State of the Capital Projects Industry (Vision)
Research
Development
Figure 3.1. Potential Roles of the Academic Community within the Context of the F/CPTR
Within this framework, members of the academic research and education community, and the institutions they represent, can play three important roles in helping achieve this vision Page 2-1
state. The academic research and education community can participate actively in, and contribute to: •
The global goal of moving the capital projects industry from its current state (i.e., the status quo) to the future state posed by FIATECH vision
•
The general goals within each of the stages of the general cycle of research to development to demonstration to deployment to research
•
The specific objectives within each of the specific elements of the F/CPTR
Within each of these three roles, the academic research and education community can contribute objective, independent, and rigorous scientific investigation and review, focused on: 1. Observation, identification, quantification, documentation, synthesis, and analysis of an initial baseline state 2. Development of theories to explain the attributes, characteristics, and behavior of this initial baseline state, and of qualitative and quantitative research protocols and methodologies to test and validate them 3. Development of hypotheses on the impacts, effects, and implications of possible changes to this initial baseline state, resulting from new technologies, and of qualitative and quantitative research protocols and methodologies to test and validate them 4. Development of metrics and procedures to assess and evaluate the impacts, effects, and implications of these new technologies The contribution of the academic community should be focused in: first, understanding the functional needs and requirements of new technologies to support the business model, and the strategic, tactical, and operational systems and processes of an organization and its people; second, understanding the way in, which the organization and its people will use such technologies and derive benefits and value from them; and third, in creating new technologies such as software, materials, or construction methods. Another way in which the academic community can make a contribution is in the research and development, in collaboration with industry to get data for testing and to ensure the relevance of the research results, of new tools and techniques in some areas, such as (1) briefing, conceptual design, and design, in which significant amounts of work has already been done; and (2) computer assisted conceptual design, in which as a result of lack of funding, the U.S. lags behind other research communities. Despite advances in many specific areas, overall research is still required to develop a better understanding of the operations and information needs of current design, construction, and management organizations. Ethnographic studies, statistical analysis of historical logs and other documents, surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and direct observation through
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research internships and exchange programs between industry and academia, in, which academic researchers would spend time within an organization in industry, are some of the ways of obtaining valid and reliable data on how the diverse set of stakeholders in this industry act and interact among them. These methods would also help identify specific problems, needs, and opportunities that could be solved, satisfied or realized through the research, development, demonstration, validation, deployment, implementation, and adoption of new technologies. Once a definitive basis of evidence is accumulated, the academic research community can develop theories, within the context of the capital projects industry, to explain issues such as the relatively low productivity in the industry, and the inhibitors, barriers, and obstacles to effectiveness and efficiency. These theories would address: first, the processes; second, the information flows within, between, and among these processes; and third, the interrelationships and interdependencies between and among the elements of these processes. Development of theory can result from the review of theories in related fields, from exposure to methods used in other contexts and cultures, from analogies to natural processes, from theories in significantly different fields, and from innovative and creative thinking that achieves insights that are truly new. Openly shared repositories of data, information, knowledge, and experience collected about businesses in this field would enable theorists to work freely from a position of evidence. Disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary workshops, exchanges between researchers in different fields, sabbatical opportunities in diverse research communities, and other programs like these could support the derivation of theory. Hypotheses on possible changes and interventions to improve capital projects industry processes can build from theories on, and from models of, these processes. The academic research community can construct proof-of-concept methodologies and tools to help industry envision possible enhancements to the status quo of what organizations in the industry do (i.e., the attributes and characteristics of facilities and civil infrastructure systems), how they do it (i.e., the processes for delivery and operation of these facilities and civil infrastructure systems), and with what (i.e., the resources used). They can also quantify and expose the likely the impacts, effects, implications, and benefits of these changes and interventions. However, even the development of working prototypes requires considerable investment of technical expertise and resources that is usually beyond the limited capacity and capability of research groups. Consequently, partnerships with industry are very important at this stage, but could be encouraged and leveraged through carefully designed research funding programs. As technology reaches the demonstration and deployment stages, the academic research community can resume the role of independent, objective evaluator of the new technology. If industry is relied upon for the evaluation, there are two potentially crippling risks: a company or unit that has invested heavily in the development of the technology may exhibit excessive bias in evaluating it, and an especially effective technology may be held within the company rather than shared with competitors. From a national perspective, each of these is a bad outcome as the industry as a whole will suffer. Finally, in addition to contributing in these four ways, the academic research community can play an important role in disseminating knowledge and skills, through their efforts in
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publication, formal undergraduate and graduate education, and professional continuing education.
3.2
Specific Research Areas
The capital projects industry in general has suffered from a low level of research activity, a piecemeal approach to research, and a narrow outlook on research, resulting from the constraints imposed by the fragmented and insular mentality of the research community, and by the highly competitive nature of companies. Government can play a critical role by establishing a sustained, broad, rationalized research program that assures a diversity of outlooks and adequate confidence for the pursuit of long-range research projects. This program can help the capital projects industry in three ways. First, it will help the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry deliver better capital programs, projects, products, and services in terms of time, cost, quality, and safety. Second, it will advance the understanding and use of knowledge to benefit education, training, and practice in the AEC industry. Finally, it will impact the industry, the economy, and society, by helping develop new approaches to teaching, learning, and collaborating in a global economy. The following section present a synthesis of the principal research questions proposed by the participants in the charrette, organized around seven potential research thrusts, as shown in Figure 3.2. Neither each general research thrust identified, nor the questions within each one, are listed in a particular order. They include: 1. General Industry Drivers and Issues 2. Theory and Methodology 3. System and Process Representation, Mapping, Modeling, Simulation, and Reengineering 4. Indicators and Metrics for Analysis, Assessment, and Evaluation of Impacts, Costs, Benefits, and Value 5. Technology Development, Demonstration, Implementation, and Adoption 6. Knowledge Management, Education, and Training 7. Environments to Support Collaboration and Research
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2. Theory and Methodology
3. System and Process Representation, Mapping, Modeling, Simulation, and Reengineering
Deployment
1. General Industry Drivers and Issues
Demonstration
Current State of the Capital Projects Industry (Status Quo)
Future State of the Capital Projects Industry (Vision)
Research
7. Environments to Support Collaboration and Research
4. Indicators and Metrics for Analysis, Assessment, and Evaluation of Impacts, Costs, Benefits, and Value
Development
6. Knowledge Management, Education, and Training
5. Technology Development, Demonstration, Implementation, and Adoption
Figure 3.2. Potential Research Thrusts within the Context of the F/CPTR
3.2.1
General Industry Drivers and Issues
This research thrust addresses questions regarding the external context of the F/CPTR. •
What are the natural principles, intrinsic to the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, which currently may not be apparent, but, which need to be identified, addressed, and incorporated in the F/CPTR?
•
What are the international or global dimensions of the F/CPTR, given that, in its current form, the roadmap neither captures nor reflects the global dimension of the capital project industry?
•
How can the F/CPTR ensure that external global and local challenges, which can affect or influence the AEC industry long term (e.g., fossil fuel depletion, climate change, environmental constraints), are addressed explicitly within the roadmap?
•
What is the true business motivation for the implementation of the full spectrum of the F/CPTR, i.e., is the F/CPTR process-led or technology-pushed?
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•
What type of fundamental changes to existing business and management models are required to make technological developments stemming from the F/CPTR practical and attractive to both the organizations and the people using them?
•
What is the business case that justifies the investment needed to fully develop and implement the F/CPTR, including the analysis of risks and the definition of metrics?
•
How do the new technologies that will emerge from the F/CPTR relate to the vision, mission, business model, and goals and objectives of the AEC organizations that would adopt them?
•
What are effective approaches for client-oriented requirements analysis to establish research directions for the construction industry?
•
What mechanisms exist, or could be developed, to forecast better the needs and constraints of owners of capital projects, and enable a higher level of alignment between them and the AEC industry as a service provider?
•
What are the attributes and characteristics of the facilities of tomorrow that could emerge from the full implementation of the vision posed by the F/CPTR?
•
If the vision posed by the F/CPTR is fully implemented in the AEC industry, what are the implications of the application of the roadmap to existing facilities, including how to get the data and develop models?
3.2.2
Theory and Methodology
This research thrust addresses questions regarding the theoretical foundation and framework of the F/CPTR. •
How can the process of observation, formulation, prediction, and validation be more rigorously incorporated within the F/CPTR, as foundational theories and methodologies that support the vision posed by the roadmap?
•
How can the substantial amount of field data that currently exists in the AEC industry be used to develop solid theories and methodologies for modeling and simulation of systems and processes embedded within the F/CPTR, which can be used to predict project performance/quality/cost, and to help researchers define the type of data to collect, and the ways these data can be used?
•
What theories exist, or could be developed, to enable accurately prediction of project outcomes (e.g., cost, duration, quality, safety, performance) for completed facilities, based on data, information, and knowledge established at the initial phases of the project (e.g., requirements definition, planning, and conceptual design)?
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•
What research protocols and methodologies exist, or could be developed, to enable the academic research community to measure and validate the results of research activities associated with, or stemming from, the F/CPTR?
•
What research protocols and methodologies exist, or could be developed, to enable the academic research community to measure and validate in a project, within the context of the F/CPTR, both individual and team performance, and also, the effectiveness of communication and collaboration?
•
What are the formal and explicit links, which currently are not apparent, among the F/CPTR and the theory of lean production, and also project-based production system theory, although certain elements in the roadmap certainly are integral to both theories?
•
How can the F/CPTR integrate sustainability theory formally and explicitly, given that the elements of the roadmap offer points of entry to sustainability principles, concepts, and strategies, and that many tools can emerge from the roadmap to enhance the sustainability of facilities, the processes used to deliver and maintain them, and the resources used in doing so?
•
How can the F/CPTR link with the theory of language action, which goes against command and control?
3.2.3
System and Process Representation, Mapping, Modeling, Simulation, and Reengineering
This research thrust addresses questions regarding the need to understand, and to potentially change, the fundamental systems and processes embedded within the F/CPTR. •
What methodologies exist, or could be developed within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, for: o Engineering problem representation and generic objective function development? o Hierarchical knowledge and data representation at multiple levels of granularity in a coordinated ontology? o Project representation of the effects of the infusion of new technologies, including tools, human networks, and organizational processes within one coherent model, to enable the prediction and measurement of the “flows” in project teams (e.g., trust and enthusiasm), and of the level of alignment between expectations and fulfillment?
•
What methodologies exist, or could be developed within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, for formalizing and mapping:
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o The project/design criteria as they change from their initial definition, through the design-procure-construct-operate-maintain process? o The information flows among the various project delivery and facilities management work processes, including characterization of the information, and all inputs, processes, and outputs? o The information flows among various roles of project team members during in planning, design, procurement, construction, and facilities management, including the definition of who needs the information and why, at a lowest semantic level? o The impacts of information on the data structures, the partition of software, the prioritization of problems? o
What information to save and what to throw away, as a first step in determining the value of the information?
o The use of technologies within specific processes? •
To support the vision of the F/CPTR and to take full advantage of the potential improvements to value, quality, performance, effectiveness, and efficiency, through technology-enabled environments and technology-based solutions: o What is the next generation of, or the changes that need to be made to reengineer: Physical or virtual organizations models? Project delivery and facilities management systems and work processes? Computer-assisted conceptual design, including front-end data loading, fuzzy project definition, and intuitive support to speed up the process of arriving at a design solution? Multi-participant, multi-criteria, and multi-objective problem solving environments and methodologies, which include full constraint modeling and simulation, and also network-based interaction, that can be used for fundamental functions, such as project management, design, planning, and scheduling?
•
What standard data models can be developed for the various sub-sectors of the AEC and Facilities Management industry, with ontologies specific to each sector, to enable the elements of the F/CPTR, possibly as an extension of IFC and in collaboration with the IAI?
•
What technologies exist, or could be developed within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, for data modeling and simulation of:
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o The process that connects the definition of owner functional requirements and needs, through planning and conceptual design, to the management of design, procurement, and construction, and all the interfaces between and among the various elements of the process? o Construction supply chains, including behavior, capacity, and commitments, in a distributed environment over the Internet? •
What technologies exist, or could be developed within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, to incorporate human factors in construction simulations?
•
What technologies exist, or could be developed, to model and simulate the effectiveness of both virtual and physical teams within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, particularly regarding units of flow such as trust and fun, within the system and work processes?
•
What is the role, and what are the implications, of Building Information Models (BIM) on product and process management and innovation, within the context and scope of the F/CPTR?
3.2.4
Indicators and Metrics for Analysis, Assessment, and Evaluation of Impacts, Costs, Benefits, and Value
This research thrust addresses questions regarding the need to quantity the costs, benefits, and value associated with, or stemming from, the implementation of the F/CPTR. •
What objective indicators and metrics exist, or could be developed within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, for quantifying, analyzing, assessing, and evaluating: o The various impacts of: Fully automated technologies on an organization and the way it does business; to its strategic planning efforts in establishing where it wants to go; and to innovation in establishing new opportunities, or changing the status quo? Specific applied technologies on the triple bottom line – economic, environmental, and social? An integrated design-procure-construct-operate-maintain process on cost, schedule, quality, safety, and other project performance parameters? o The success achieved in the improvement of:
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The value, quality, and performance of the facilities and products delivered? The effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity of the delivery processes used? o The tangible and intangible costs and benefits of, and the return on the investment on, technology enabled applications to support the complete life cycle of a capital project, from planning, through design, procurement, and construction, to operations and maintenance? o The benefits of research in the various elements of the F/CPTR, not only to the AEC industry, but also to the IT industry, in order to engage the IT industry to participate in, and contribute to, enabling the vision posed by the roadmap? o The value to industry of: The roadmap? The research efforts and results (i.e., the technologies, products, tools, and methods) stemming from the roadmap? True real-time data and information to support decision-making? •
Is there an equivalent of Moore’s Law for the F/CPTR, which could help the AEC industry establish where it is going, and if it is getting there?
3.2.5
Technology Development, Demonstration, Implementation, and Adoption
This research thrust addresses questions regarding the full cycle of development, demonstration, implementation, and adoption of technologies within the F/CPTR. •
What is the primary emphasis for the implementation of the full spectrum of the F/CPTR, i.e., is the F/CPTR focused on new technology development or on the development of new applications of existing technologies?
•
What sustainable models for technological development, demonstration, implementation, and adoption exist, or could be developed within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, to move from vision to full deployment and application?
•
What methodologies exist, or could be developed to: o Establish if the current state of technology is ready to support the implementation of the vision posed by the F/CPTR?
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o Demonstrate, within an organization and without the fear of failure, the capability of technologies to integrate systems, processes, and data flows, through test beds and pilot projects? o Identify the fundamental issues associated with deployment and application, particularly inhibitors, obstacles, and barriers that affect technology adoption? •
How can the F/CPTR incorporate more rigorous technology evaluation protocols, including protocols for the assessment and definition of functional needs and requirements; the generation of various possible development paths; and the selection of the most appropriate one?
•
What are the non-technical impediments to the integration of life cycle data and information generated by different sources (i.e., owner, designer, constructor, and operator/user) and at different project stages (i.e., planning, design, procurement, construction, and operation)?
•
How can the F/CPTR incorporate more formally and explicitly human factors within the full cycle of development, demonstration, implementation, and adoption of technologies, such as conflicts caused by: o The differences between the prevailing paradigms and mentalities in the AEC industry, and the new ways of thinking required by the vision posed by the F/CPTR? o The differences in cultures and perspectives of multiple stakeholders (i.e., owner, designer, constructor, and operator/user) on how people interact with technology, and on the expected levels of performance resulting from that interaction? o The resistance to change of professionals in the AEC industry, and the potential changes in professional roles required by automation to achieve greater efficiency, induced by the realization of the vision posed by the F/CPTR?
•
How can the F/CPTR address potential incompatibilities between the technology and the people using the technology, especially between: o The intrinsic merit and value of a specific technology, and the motivation and enjoyment in the use of that technology? o The expectations for use, and the actual levels of use of a specific technology, regardless of its merit and value? o What things people would like to do, and what technology actually lets them do? o How people would like to do things, and how technology forces them to do it?
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•
How can the F/CPTR address the prevalent pro-experience bias in the AEC industry, which can be seen from two different points of view: o If experience is considered to have intrinsic benefits, what methodologies exist, or could be developed to accelerate the internalization of experience in engineering students, and provide them with knowledge and expertise equivalent to that of those who have 10 years of industry experience? o If experience is considered to be a barrier to innovation, what methodologies exist, or could be developed to influence experienced people to promote innovation?
•
What methodologies exist, or could be developed, for development of human/technology interfaces, which allow technology to be used intuitively within high levels of complexity, accessibility, and speed?
•
How can trust be built and flexibility be maintained among all the project stakeholders (i.e., owner, designer, constructor, and operator/user), within a system of fully integrated and automated technologies void of human interactions?
3.2.6
Knowledge Management, Education, and Training
This research thrust addresses questions regarding management of knowledge within the F/CPTR, and associated education and training issues. •
What mechanisms and communication technologies exist, or could be developed, to facilitate effective and efficient collaborative business to business learning, project to project learning, peer to peer learning, and individual learning, from the real-time generation, capture, representation, management, sharing, dissemination, and application of: o AEC project and industry knowledge, to avoid repetition of past mistakes, and also reinvention of the wheel? o AEC project and industry lessons learned, to influence future behavior, both within organizations, across organizations, and across life cycle phases? o Knowledge and lessons learned from other industries with similarities to the AEC industry?
•
How can scientific developments in teaching, learning, diffusion of innovation, and organizational behavior, among others, be incorporated more formally and explicitly within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, after a comprehensive, theory-based evaluation of what works from them for the AEC industry?
•
What are the education and training needs within the total education pipeline (i.e., from K-12, through informal education, to undergraduate, graduate, and professional
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education), for the 21st Century workforce (i.e., from foremen and trade workers to AEC professionals), to be able to work well within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, and also be able to use the new technologies emerging from the various elements of the roadmap? •
What mechanisms exist, or could be developed, to: o Determine the fundamentals from other disciplines, such as computer science and social science, which would enhance the education of AEC professionals and expose students to knowledge they cannot get in practice, and as a result, enable them to work more effectively within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, and to understand better what is coming in the future? o Create interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, experiential, and collaborative learning experiences within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, such as keystone projects, practical training, and internships, among others? o Create reality- and experience-based virtual scenarios to be used within an academic setting, which begin by exposing students to theory and then expand to experimental testing and simulation, both physical and virtual? o Deliver these fundamentals and learning experiences in more depth, more rigorously, and with higher doses of reality, within the context and the realities of current AEC education programs, and, as good point of reference, applying lessons from other efforts in attempting to integrate new content and materials across courses in a curriculum? o Enhance the productivity and competitiveness, through accelerated education and training on technologies emerging from the F/CPTR, of: The new workforce, and as a result, enable them to compete more effectively with professionals who have been in the workforce much longer, and? The existing professional workforce that is still operating as they always have, and as a result, enable them to increase their understanding and proficiency in the use of new technologies?
•
How do you prepare technological leaders within the context and scope of the F/CPTR, particularly AEC professionals who have the ability to understand the strengths and opportunities, as well as weaknesses and limitations, of technology at strategic, tactical, and operational levels, rather than AEC professionals who only have skills, competencies, and proficiency in the use of technology?
3.2.7
Environments to Support Collaboration and Research
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This research thrust addresses questions regarding the environments required within the F/CPTR, to support collaboration and research. •
What environments and technologies exist, or could be developed, to support, within the context and scope of the F/CPTR: o Real-time collaboration between and among practitioners? o Distributed collaboration for both routine projects and emergency response situations? o Collaborative visualization environments for project planning that encourages improved input from all project participants? o Collaborative design supported by both tacit knowledge as well as data? o Collaborative active decision support through navigation of multi-dimensional solution spaces? o Collaboration within virtual organizations and contractual relationships among owners, designers, contractors, sub-contractors, and municipal authorities, among others?
•
What are the parameters, methodologies, and new institutional models for the Cyberinfrastructure required to fully realize and expedite the vision posed by the F/CPTR, and enable: o Highly interdisciplinary, geographically distributed, and diverse research capability for the exchange of data, the sharing of software tools, and the codevelopment of strategies and processes (both machine and human-based)? o The establishment of community-specific information requirements and data standards for diverse research communities? o Interdisciplinary interoperability? o Rapid deployment and availability of research capabilities in the field, not just at the office? o Prototype approaches for incremental improvements, within an extremely fragmented, complex domain?
•
How can the F/CPTR connect with other initiatives that currently exist, especially those that have a track record of attracting significant investment in research, such as the environmental community, and have each one contribute to the other, creating synergy between the two?
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•
How can the A/E/C research community go beyond being inward looking, and scale and generalize the vision and scope of the F/CPTR to other contexts and domains?
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SECTION 4 Next Steps The charrette participants strongly support the general goals of the FCPTR and want to participate in both transforming the industry and in helping to develop shared research and development visions. The individual commitments listed in Appendix 11 demonstrate the breadth and depth of support among participants. The charrette ended with discussion opportunities for collaboration between the academic community and FIATECH and what steps may be taken to achieve our joint goals. Specific comments are recorded in Appendix 12 and are summarized below as recommended next steps: •
Charrette participants generally expressed a strong desire to develop a community wide vision for research and development activities. The current state of the FCPTR and the activities of the charrette provide a basis for development of such a community vision.
•
Correspondingly, there is a need for a formal outlet within our community to develop a vision document and supporting community. Existing venues such as trade associations and committees were discussed but were generally thought to not provide the necessary mechanisms to develop a vision document. As such, there is likely a need to develop a new venue/group for our community. Such a group could meet at complementary events, such as the IT in CE conference in Cancun in 2005. It is recommended that the charrette steering committee, in conjunction with volunteers from the charrette participants, explore development of such a group and vision document with the idea of hosting a kick-off group meeting in Cancun.
•
There is a need for FIATECH to develop more structured mechanisms to accept input from the academic community towards further development of the FCPTR. In general, the charrette participants do not support or envision development of a competing roadmap and ascribe to the development of a common vision shared by government, industry, and academic stakeholders. Individual charrette participants and the steering committee should continue to work with FIATECH to generate such structured mechanisms.
•
The charrette participants, while coming from a broad range of backgrounds, do not fully represent the skills needed to develop a comprehensive Roadmap of the scope and scale currently reflected in the FCPTR. There is a desire for openness and inclusiveness, and a next step for many participants is to identify expertise in their respective institutions that could aid development of the Roadmap.
•
Charrette participants should report on their activities to support their commitments. The website developed for the charrette could be a venue for such reports and continued community development.
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SECTION 5 References FIATECH (2004a) FIATECH Research, Development and Deployment Consortium, Austin, TX, 2004 Current Web Site: http://www.fiatech.org/ FIATECH (2004b) Capital Projects Technology Roadmap; FIATECH, Austin, TX, 2004 Current Web Site: http://www.fiatech.org/projects/roadmap/cptri.htm FIATECH (2003c) Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Project Deliverables: Executive Summary; Strategic Overview, Tactical Plan, and Current State Assessment; FIATECH, Austin, TX, 2003. Current Web Site: http://www.fiatech.org/projects/roadmap/Resources.htm NCI (2004) National Charrette Institute; Portland, OR, 2004 Current Web Site: http://www.charretteinstitute.org/ NSF (2004a) National Science Foundation; Washington, D.C., 2004 Current Web Site: http://www.nsf.gov NSF (2004b) Information and Technology for Infrastructure Systems Program Element – ITIS, of the Infrastructure and Information Systems Program – IIS, Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems, Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation; Washington, D.C., 2004 Current Web Site: http://www.eng.nsf.gov/cms/iis.htm NSF (2004c) Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems, Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation; Washington, D.C., 2004 Current Web Site: http://www.eng.nsf.gov/cms/ NSF (2004d) Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation; Washington, D.C., 2004 Current Web Site: http://www.nsf.gov/home/eng/ NSF (2004e) Cyberinfrastructure Program, Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation; Washington, D.C., 2004 Current Web Site: http://www.eng.nsf.gov/general/cyber/index.htm
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APPENDIX 1 List of Charrette Participants
Page A1–1
List of Charrette Participants Sponsor Dr. Jesus M. de la Garza Program Director of the National Science Foundation Information Technology and Infrastructure Systems (ENG/CMS) 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 545 Arlington, VA 22230 Tel.: (703) 292-7791 Fax: (703) 292-8360 Email: jgarza@nsf.gov URL: http://www.eng.nsf.gov/cms/
Steering Committee Dr. James H. Garrett, Jr. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Engineering Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering CEE Office Location: Porter Hall 123A Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 USA Tel.: (412) 268-5674 Fax: (412) 268-7813 Email: garrett@cmu.edu URL: www.ce.cmu.edu/~garrett/
Dr. Richard H.F. Jackson Director FIATECH 3925 West Braker Lane (R4500) Austin, TX, 78759 Tel.: (512) 232-9601 Fax: (512) 232-9677 Mobile: (512) 422-3456(m) Washington Office: Tel.: (301) 424-4202 Fax: (301) 424-4203 Email: jackson@fiatech.org URL: www.fiatech.org
Dr. William J. O'Brien Assistant Professor College of Engineering Dept of Civil Engineering The University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station C1752 Austin, TX 78712-0273 Tel.: (512) 471-4638 Fax: (512) 471-3191 Email: wjob@mail.utexas.edu URL: www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/obrien
Dr. Jorge Vanegas Fred and Teresa Estrada Professor, College of Engineering Associate Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology 790 Atlantic Drive, N.W. Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0355 U.S. GA Tel.: (404) 894-9881 Fax: (404) 894-5418 Email: jorge.vanegas@ce.gatech.edu
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Charrette Participants Dr. Burcu Akinci Assistant Professor Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Tel.: (412) 268-2959 Fax: (412) 268-7813 Email: bakinci@andrew.cmu.edu URL: www.ce.cmu.edu/~bakinci/
Dr. Chimay J Anumba BSC PGCE CENG FISTRUCTE FICE FCIOB MASCE Centre Director Loughborough University Tel.: +44 (0) 1509 222615 Fax: +44 (0) 1509 223982 Email: C.J.Anumba@lboro.ac.uk URL: www.cice.org.uk
Dr. Godfried Augenbroe Associate Professor College of Architecture, Doctoral Program Georgia Institute of Technology College of Architecture, Doctoral Program Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0155 U.S.A. Tel.: (404) 894-1686 / 3476 (SECT.) Fax: (404) 894-1629 Email: fried.augenbroe@arch.gatech.edu
Dr. Claude Bédard, P.Eng., DIC Dean of Research and Technology Transfer Université du Québec. École de technologie supérieure 1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest Montréal (Québec) H3C 1 K3 Tel.: (514) 396-8829 Fax: (514) 396-8525 Email: claude.bedard@etsmtl.ca URL: www.etsmtl.ca
Dr. Hans Bjornsson Professor Chalmers Univ. of Technology School of Technology Management & Economics S-4112 96 Gothenburg Sweden Tel.: +46 31-282515 Email: hansbj@mot.chalmers.se
Dr. Carlos H. Caldas Assistant Professor Department of Civil Engineering The University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station C1752; ECJ 5. 436 Austin, TX 78712-0273 Tel.: (512) 471-6014 Fax: (512) 471-3191 Email: caldas@mail.utexas.edu URL: www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/caldas
Dr. Luh-Maan Chang Associate Professor Construction Engineering and Management Purdue University School of Civil Engineering Civil Engineering Building, Room 1231 550 Stadium Mall Drive West Lafayette, IN 47907-2051 Tel.: (765) 494-2246 Fax: (765) 494-0644 Email: changlm@purdue.edu
Dr. Allan D. Chasey, P.E. Associate Professor School of Engineering Arizona State University Arizona State University Main Campus P.O. Box 870204 Tempe, AZ 85287-0204 Tel.: (480) 965-7437 Fax: (480) 965-9842 Email: achasey@asu.edu URL: http://create.asu.edu
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Charrette Participants Lawrence Chiarelli, P.E., Esq. Industry Professor Department of Civil Engineering Associate Director Center for Construction Management Technology Polytechnic University Six MetroTech Center Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel.: (718) 260-4040 Fax: (718) 260-3433 Email: lchiarel@poly.edu
Dr. Mark J. Clayton Executive Associate Dean/Associate Professor Texas A&M University 3137 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-3137 Tel.: (979) 845-1222 Fax: (979) 845-4491 Email: mark-clayton@tamu.edu
Dr. Nashwan Dawood Director Centre for Construction Innovation and Research School of Science & Technology University of Teesside University of Middlesbrough Tees Valley TSI 3BA UK Tel.: +44 (0) 1642 342405 Fax: +44 (0) 1642 342494 Email: n.n.dawood@tees.ac.uk URL: www.tees.ac.uk
Dr. Francis T Edum-Fotwe Dept of Civil and Building Engineering Loughborough University Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU UK Tel.: +44(0)150 922-3776 Fax: +44(0)150 922-3981 Email: f.t.edum-fotwe@lboro.ac.uk
Dr. Tamer E. El-Diraby Asst. Prof. & Director Ctr. for Info. Sys. in Infrastructure & Construction Dept. of Civil Engineering University of Toronto 35 St. George St. Toronto, ON, M5S 1A4 Tel.: (416) 978-8653 Email: tamer@ecf.utoronto.ca
Dr. Ian Flood Rinker School College of DCP University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611 Tel.: (352) 273 1159 Email: flood@ufl.edu
Dr. Thomas Froese, P.Eng. Associate Professor The University of British Columbia Department of Civil Engineering 2324 Main Mall Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1ZA Tel.: (604) 822-2027 Fax: (604) 822-6901 Email: tfroese@civil.ubc.ca URL: www.civil.ubc.ca/~tfroese
Francois Grobler Civil Engineer Researcher U.S Army, ERDC, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory P. O. Box 9005 Champaign, IL 61821 Tel.: (217) 373-6723 Fax: (217) 373-6724 Email: f-grobler@cecer.army.mil
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Charrette Participants Dr. Karen Lee Hansen Assistant Professor Department of Civil Engineering California State University, Sacramento 6000 J Street Sacramento, CA 95819-6029 Tel.: (916) 278-7505 Fax: (916) 278-7957 Email: hansenk@ecs.csus.edu
Dr. Michael Horman Assistant Professor Department of Architectural Engineering Pennstate The Pennsylvania State University 211 Engineering Unit A University Park, PA 16802-1417 Tel.: (814) 863-2080 Fax: (814) 863-4789 Email: mjhorman@engr.psu.edu
Dr. R. Raymond Issa, J.D., P.E. UFRF and CSR Rinker Professor Director, Graduate and Distance Education Programs M.E. Rinker, St. School of Building Construction College of Design, Construction and Planning University of Florida 304 Rinker P.O. Box 115703 Gainesville, FL 32611-5703 Tel.: (352) 273-1152 Fax: (352) 392-9606 Email: raymond-issa@ufl.edu URL: www.bcn.ufl.edu
Dr. Vineet Kamat Assistant Professor Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Michigan 2354 G.G. Brown Bldg. 2350 Hayward Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2125 Tel.: (734) 764-4325 Fax: (734) 764-4292 Email: vkamat@umich.edu URL: www.engin.umich.edu/vkamat
Dr. Julian Kang Assistant Professor Department Of Construction Science, Texas A&M University 422 Langford Building A 3137 TAMU College Station, TX 77843 Tel.: (979) 845-7055 Fax: (979) 862-1572 Email: juliankang@tamu.edu
Dr. Kincho Henry Law Professor Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Stanford University Terman Engineering Center Stanford, CA 94305-4020 Tel.: (650) 725-3154 Fax: (650) 723-7514 Email: law@ce.stanford.edu
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Charrette Participants Dr. Ghang Lee Research Scientist College of Architecture Georgia Institute of Technology 247 4th Street Atlanta, GA 30332-0155 Tel.: (404) 894-4668 Email: ghang.lee@arch.gatech.edu
Dr. Liang Y. Liu Associate Profesor University Of Illinois At UrbanaChampaign 205 N. Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801 Tel.: (217) 333-6951 Fax: (217) 333-9464 Email: LLiu1@uiuc.edu
Dr. John I. Messner Assistant Professor Department of Architectural Engineering College of Engineering The Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering The Pennsylvania State University 104 Engineering Unit 'A' University Park, PA 16802-1417 Tel.: (814) 865-4578 Fax: (814) 863-4789 Email: jmessner@cngr.psu.edu
Dr. John Miles Professor Cardiff School of Engineering Division of Civil Engineering Cardiff University Cardiff University P.O. Box 925 Cardiff CF24 OYF Tel.: +44 (0) 29 2087 5694 Fax: +44 (0) 29 2087 4597 Email: milesJC@cardiff.ac.uk URL: www.cardiff.ac.uk/engin
Dr. Ian Parmee CEng MinstE MASCE Professor Advanced Computation in Design and Decision-making Bristol University of the West of England, Bristol Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY Tel.: +44 (0) 117 328 3137 Fax: +44 (0) 117 328 2587 Email: ian.parmee@uwe.ac.uk URL: www.ad-comtech.co.uk/AC
Dr. Annie R. Pearce, LeedTM Program Director, Sustainable Facilities and Infrastructure Program Georgia Tech Research Institute Center for Sustainable Urban Revitalization Atlanta, GA 30332-0837 Tel.: (404) 894-8089 Fax: (404) 894-2184 Email: annie.pearce@gtri.gatech.edu URL: http://maven.gtri.gatech.edu/sfi
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Charrette Participants Dr. Hugues Rivard, P.Eng. Professor, Computer-Aided Engineering Department of Construction Engineering UniversitĂŠ du QuĂŠbec 1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest Montreal (Quebec) H3C 1 K3 Tel.: (514) 396-8667 Fax: (514) 396-8584 Email: hugues.rivard@etsmtl.ca URL: www.ctn.etsmtl.ca/hrivard
Dr. Boong-Yeol Ryoo Assistant Professor Florida International University Department of Construction Management College of Engineering Engineering Center, EC 2954 10555 W. Flagler Street Miami, FL 33174 Tel.: (305) 348-7227 Fax: (305) 348-6255 Email: ryoob@fiu.edu
Dr. Sam Salem, P.E., CPC Director, Infrastructure Systems and Construction Engineering Program Civil and Environmental Engineering Department University of Cincinnati P.O. Box 210071 Cincinnati, Ohio 45221 Tel.: (513) 556-3759 Fax: (513) 556-2599 Email: osalem@uc.edu
Dr. Anil Sawhney Associate Professor DEWSC Arizona State University PO Box 870204 Tempe, AZ 85287-0204 USA Tel.: (480) 965-7417 Fax: (480) 965-1769 Email: anil.sawhney@asu.edu
Dr. Ian F.C. Smith, SIA Professor of Structural Engineering Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Lausanne Imac - IS - Enac - Epfl CH-1015 Lausanne Switzerland Tel.: +41-21-693 52 42 Email: lan.Smith@epfl.ch URL: http://imacwww.epfl.ch
Dr. Lucio Soibelman Associate Professor Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Tel.: (412) 268-2952 Fax: (412) 268-7813 Email: lucio@andrew.cmu.edu
Dr. Michael Terk Assistant Professor Rice University Rice University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering-MS 318 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, Texas 77251-1892 Tel.: (713) 348-2380 Fax: (713) 348-5268 Email: terk@rice.edu
Dr. Iris D. Tommelein Professor Construction Engineering & Management Civil & Environmental Engineering Department University of California 215-A McLaughlin Hall # 1712 Berkley, CA 94720-1712 Tel.: (510) 643-8678 Fax: (510) 643-8919 Email: tommelein@ce.berkeley.edu URL: www.ce.berkeley.edu/-tommelein
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Charrette Participants Dr. Ron R. Wakefield William E. Jamerson Professor of Building Construction Director of Environmental Design and Planning PhD Program 122 Burruss Hall Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 Tel.: (540) 231 9063 Fax: (540) 231 7339 Mobile: (540) 818 4603 Email: ronwak@vt.edu
Dr. Yhnin Zhu Assistant Professor Department of Construction Management College of Engineering Florida International University Engineering Center, EC 2956 10555 W. Flagler Street Miami, FL 33174 Tel.: (305) 348-3517 Fax: (305) 348-6255 Email: zhuy@fiu.edu
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Figure A1.1. Charrette Participants Group Picture – Final Day of the Charrette
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APPENDIX 2 Public Invitation Letter and Registration Form
Page A2–1
&
AN OPEN LETTER OF INVITATION FOR AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CHARRETTE: SETTING AN ACADEMIC RESEARCH AGENDA FOR THE FIATECH CAPITAL PROJECTS TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP INITIATIVE August 27, 2004 Dear Prospective Charrette Participant: As you may be aware, FIATECH (http://www.fiatech.org) is a collaborative and non-profit research, development and deployment consortium composed of owners in the private and public sectors; engineering, procurement, and construction contractors; research organizations; and academic institutions. FIATECH serves as an integrating entity to address current challenges, pressures, issues, and opportunities facing the capital projects industry. One of FIATECH’s primary focuses to date has been the development of the Capital Projects Technology Roadmap, which provides an overarching vision of a highly automated and integrated capital project and facility management environment. In this future environment, operations and systems of all project partners and project functions are interconnected and integrated across all phases of the facility life cycle. Furthermore, data, information, and knowledge are available on demand, where and when they are needed, to all interested stakeholders. This new paradigm envisions (1) automated systems, processes, and equipment, to drastically reduce the time and cost of planning, design, and construction of facilities and critical civil infrastructure systems in both the public and the private sectors; (2) scenario-based planning systems and modeling tools, to enable rapid and accurate evaluation of multiple project alternatives, to find the best balance of quality, value, performance, productivity, and cost and time effectiveness; and (3) new materials and methods, to reduce the time and cost of construction and greatly extend facility performance, functionality, aesthetics, affordability, sustainability, security, and responsiveness to changing business demands. If you are a member of the academic community with expertise and experience in technology areas related to some of the nine functional elements of the FIATECH technology roadmap, and to various focus areas for its tactical implementation, I would like to extend an invitation to attend a multidisciplinary charrette on behalf of Dr. Jesus M. de la Garza, Program Director, Information and Technology for Infrastructure Systems Program Element – ITIS, of the Infrastructure and Information Systems Program – IIS (http://www.eng.nsf.gov/cms/iis.htm), within the Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems (http://www.eng.nsf.gov/cms/), of the Engineering Directorate (http://www.nsf.gov/home/eng/), of the National Science Foundation (http://www.nsf.gov), who is the official sponsor of this event, and on behalf of the other members of the Steering Committee for this event (Dr. James Garrett, Carnegie Mellon University – garrett@cmu.edu; Dr. William O’Brien, University of Texas at Austin – wjob@mail.utexas.edu; and Dr. Richard Jackson, Director of the FIATECH Consortium – rjackson@fiatech.org).
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The main objectives of this charrette are to: (1)
Present and discuss the functional elements and implementation focus areas;
(2)
Collect, discuss, and record reactions and in-depth critiques;
(3)
Present and discuss the current Cyberinfrastructure Program at the Directorate for Engineering of NSF (http://www.eng.nsf.gov/general/cyber/index.htm); and
(4)
Identify synergies between the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap and the NSF Cyberinfrastructure Program.
The principal outcomes of the charrette are envisioned to be: first, an alignment between the academic community and the FIATECH Consortium around the technology roadmap; second, development of a national research agenda for the academic community’s future involvement in NSF-funded research supporting and furthering FIATECH’s vision, mission, and goals; and third, a proposal for collaboration in research and education programs, projects, and activities between the academic community and the FIATECH Consortium. We are striving to engage academic experts from multiple disciplines, who normally do not have many opportunities to interact with each other (e.g., construction engineering and management, civil and environmental engineering, other engineering disciplines such as electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial and systems engineering, and other affinity disciplines such as public policy, management, architecture, and computer science), in a meaningful and focused dialogue toward strengthening and enhancing the new and bold paradigm of technology for the capital projects industry posed by FIATECH. The charrette, which is an intensive and focused workshop, will be held immediately after the FIATECH Fall Technology Conference (http://www.fiatech.org/meet/fall2004conf.html). It will span three-days (1:00 pm – 5:00 pm, on Wednesday, October 13; 8:00 am – 5:00 pm, on Thursday, October 14; and 8:00 am – 3:00 pm, on Friday, October 15, 2004), and will be held at the Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel (2001 Post Oak Boulevard, Houston, TX, 77056-4401). Charrette participants will be responsible for making their own reservations directly with the hotel. Their telephone number is (713) 961-9300, and their fax number is (713) 623-6685. A block of 40 rooms has been reserved at a rate of $110/night (plus 17% for local taxes and fees) until no later than Tuesday, September 21, 2004. After this date, all rooms within the block of 40 that have not been reserved will be released to other customers, thus making lodging for this event at this hotel contingent on availability at the time of making the reservation. In addition, the rate will no longer be guaranteed after this date. In order to ensure that the objectives of the charrette are fulfilled, participation in this event will be limited to a maximum of 40 experts from academic institutions, both in the U.S. and from other countries, who: •
Pre-register, on a first-come first-serve basis, by Friday, October 1, 2004 (pre-registrations after this date will be evaluated on an individual case basis);
•
Commit to prepare a short (1-2 page) position paper on a topic of relevance to the roadmap; and
•
Commit to read, review, and critique the documents included in the pre-charrette reading material package, which are most relevant to their areas of expertise, experience, and interest.
This event will not have a registration fee for all pre-registered charrette participants. In addition, all the printed materials for the charrette, breakfast and lunch on Thursday and Friday, and coffee and refreshments for all breaks, will also be provided to all participants at no cost. Charrette participants will be responsible for their own travel expenses. The official Web Site for the charrette is http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/, where you will find (1) the agenda and logistic information for the charrette; (2) downloadable information documents for ample dissemination of the announcement of this event; (3) links to all the pre-charrette reading material; and (4) information about the various mechanisms to enable formal input to the charrette for anyone interested in contributing to the charrette, whether they are able to attend or not. Page A2–3
If you accept this invitation, and plan to attend, please complete and send the Charrette Registration Form attached to this letter, directly to me, by 5:00 pm EDT, on Friday, October 1, 2004, by postal mail, by fax to (404) 894-5418, or via email to jorge.vanegas@ce.gatech.edu. If you would like to contribute formally to this charrette, but will not be able to attend for any reason, an electronic forum has been set up, which will enable you to participate in this event in two ways: •
Through two live on-line forums with members of the Steering Committee, and anyone else interested in participating (in live chat room format). The first electronic forum will be held on Wednesday, September 1, 2004, from 12:00 noon to 2:00 pm EDT; and the second one will be held on Wednesday, September 29, 2004, from 12:00 noon to 2:00 pm EDT.
•
Through asynchronous threaded discussions (in electronic bulletin board format). These discussions will be active until Friday, October 8, 2004.
If you plan to participate in the first electronic forum, please complete and send the Electronic Forum Registration Form attached to this letter directly to me, by fax to (404) 894-5418, or via email to jorge.vanegas@ce.gatech.edu, by 5:00 pm EDT, on Tuesday, August 30, 2004, to obtain an access username and password. If you plan to participate in the second electronic forum, please register by 5:00 pm EDT, on Tuesday, September 28, 2004. If you plan to participate in the threaded discussions only, please register by 5:00 pm EDT, on Friday, October 1, 2004. Note: If you register for the first forum, you automatically are eligible to participate in the second one, and if you register for either forum, you automatically are eligible to participate in the threaded discussions. Finally, if you would like to suggest any names of other colleagues who, in your opinion, would contribute to the success of this charrette, please let me know who they are, their affiliation, and an email address, so I can extend an invitation directly to them. The active engagement of the academic community in the implementation of the paradigm posed by the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap will not only enhance and strengthen the infrastructure for research and education in the specific knowledge domains addressed within the roadmap, but more importantly, will ensure the delivery, operation, and maintenance of the facilities and the critical civil infrastructure systems that form the U.S. industrial base, supporting both the Nation’s economy and its way of life within society. Sincerely,
Dr. Jorge Vanegas School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology 790 Atlantic Dr. Atlanta, GA 30332-0355 Tel.: (404) 894-9881 • Fax: (404) 894-5418 Email: jorge.vanegas@ce.gatech.edu
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& AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CHARRETTE: SETTING AN ACADEMIC RESEARCH AGENDA FOR THE FIATECH CAPITAL PROJECTS TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP INITIATIVE [http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/] October 13 – 15, 2004 Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel, Houston, TX
CHARRETTE REGISTRATION FORM Name: ________________________________________________________________________ Title: _________________________________________________________________________ Academic Institution: ____________________________________________________________ Address Line 1: ________________________________________________________________ Address Line 2: ________________________________________________________________ Name: ________________________________________________________________________ City: __________________________________
State:_______
Zip: _________________
Country: _______________________________ Phone:_________________________________
Fax:__________________________
E-mail: ________________________________ The registration deadline for attending the charrette is 5:00 pm EDT, on Friday, October 1, 2004 (preregistrations after this date will be evaluated individual on an case by case basis). Space in the charrette is limited to 40 participants, so please register early. You may register by completing this form and sending it to Dr. Jorge Vanegas by any of the following options: Postal mail:
Dr. Jorge Vanegas CEE/Georgia Tech/0355 School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MC: 0355 Georgia Institute of Technology 790 Atlantic Dr. Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Fax: (404) 894-5418
Email: jorge.vanegas@ce.gatech.edu
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& AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CHARRETTE: SETTING AN ACADEMIC RESEARCH AGENDA FOR THE FIATECH CAPITAL PROJECTS TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP INITIATIVE [http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/] October 13 – 15, 2004 Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel, Houston, TX
ELECTRONIC FORUM REGISTRATION FORM Name: ________________________________________________________________________ Title: _________________________________________________________________________ Academic Institution: ____________________________________________________________ Address Line 1: _________________________________________________________________ Address Line 2: _________________________________________________________________ Name: ________________________________________________________________________ City:___________________________________
State: _______
Zip: _________________
Country: _______________________________ Phone: _________________________________
Fax: __________________________
E-mail:_________________________________ Preference (Check all that apply) ____ Electronic Forum 1
____ Electronic Forum 2
____ Threaded Discussions
The registration deadlines are: (1) for the first electronic forum – 5:00 pm EDT, on Tuesday, August 30, 2004; (2) for the second electronic forum – 5:00 pm EDT, on Tuesday, September 28, 2004; and (3) for the threaded discussions only – 5:00 pm EDT, on Friday, October 1, 2004. (Pre-registrations after these dates will be evaluated on an individual case basis. Space is limited to 100 participants in the electronic forums and threaded discussions, so please register early. You may register by completing this form and sending it to Dr. Jorge Vanegas by any of the following options:
Fax: (404) 894-5418
Email: jorge.vanegas@ce.gatech.edu
Page A2–6
Page A2–7
APPENDIX 3 Formal Input Sheets
Page A3–1
An Interdisciplinary Charrette: Setting an Academic Research Agenda for the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Initiative [http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/]
October 13 – 15, 2004 Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel, Houston, TX
CHARRETTE INPUT SHEET No. 1 Reactions Reactions from the “Gut” What is your reaction from an instinctual point of view to the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap? In other words, based on your academic or professional experience, what is your initial reaction to the overall roadmap, to any of the elements of the vision model, and/or to any of the focus areas of the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap?
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Reactions from the “Heart” What is your reaction from an emotional point of view to the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap? In other words, what kind of emotions, if any, does the overall roadmap, to any of the elements of the vision model, and/or to any of the focus areas of the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap elicit from you?
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________
Page A3–2
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Reactions from the “Mind” What is your reaction from an intellectual point of view to the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap? In other words, is the overall roadmap, any of the elements of the vision model, and/or any of the focus areas of the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap anchored in a solid theoretical foundation?
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________
Additional Comments
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________
Page A3–3
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________
Page A3–4
An Interdisciplinary Charrette: Setting an Academic Research Agenda for the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Initiative [http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/]
October 13 – 15, 2004 Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel, Houston, TX
CHARRETTE INPUT SHEET No. 2a Strengths and Opportunities Strengths What are the strengths of the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap?
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Opportunities What are the opportunities posed by the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap?
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An Interdisciplinary Charrette: Setting an Academic Research Agenda for the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Initiative [http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/]
October 13 – 15, 2004 Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel, Houston, TX
CHARRETTE INPUT SHEET No. 2b Challenges: Inhibitors, Obstacles, and Barriers Inhibitors/Enablers What are some of the key inhibitors in the capital projects industry that could slow down, or are currently slowing down, the implementation of the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap? For each inhibitor identified, can you suggest an enabler that could overcome the inhibitor and accelerate the implementation of the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap?
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Obstacles/Obstacle-Removers What are some of the key obstacles in the capital projects industry that could make difficult, or are currently making difficult, the implementation of the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap? For each obstacle identified, can you suggest a possible obstacle-remover that could eliminate the obstacle and ease the implementation of the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap?
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______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Barriers/Barrier-Breakers What are some of the key barriers in the capital projects industry that could prevent, or are currently preventing, the implementation of the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap? For each barrier identified, can you suggest a possible barrier-breaker that could eliminate the barrier and ease the implementation of the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap?
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Additional Comments
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An Interdisciplinary Charrette: Setting an Academic Research Agenda for the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Initiative [http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/]
October 13 – 15, 2004 Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel, Houston, TX
CHARRETTE INPUT SHEET No. 3 In-depth Critique Critique of the Overall Roadmap Please provide, from an academic perspective, an in-depth critique (i.e., what you like and do not like, including the reasons for liking and not liking) of the overall FIATECH Technology Roadmap.
______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Critique of the Elements of the Vision Model Please provide, from an academic perspective, an in-depth critique (i.e., what you like and do not like, including the reasons for liking and not liking) of any of the elements of the vision model of the FIATECH Technology Roadmap.
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______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Critique of the Focus Areas of the Tactical Plan Please provide, from an academic perspective, an in-depth critique (i.e., what you like and do not like, including the reasons for liking and not liking) focus areas of the tactical plan of the FIATECH Technology Roadmap.
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Additional Comments
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An Interdisciplinary Charrette: Setting an Academic Research Agenda for the FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap Initiative [http://www.ce.gatech.edu/research/NSF-FIATECH_Charrette/]
October 13 – 15, 2004 Doubletree Houston-Post Oak Hotel, Houston, TX
CHARRETTE INPUT SHEET No. 4 Research Agenda Development Research Questions Please provide, from an academic perspective, specific research questions that stem from the FIATECH Technology Roadmap. For each question listed, please provide a brief comment on how it addresses the NSF criteria of intellectual merit and broader impact.
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______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Research Questions Please provide, from an academic perspective, specific research questions that stem from the FIATECH Technology Roadmap. For each question listed, please provide a brief comment on how it addresses the NSF criteria of intellectual merit and broader impact.
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CHARRETTE INPUT SHEET No. 5 Charrette Evaluation Evaluation Pre-charrette Activities: Excellent
Average
Unsatisfactory
Communications Charrette Web Site
Evaluation Charrette Activities: Too many
Just right
Too few
Too long
Just right
Too short
Too fast
Just right
Too slow
Excellent
Average
Unsatisfactory
Number of Participants
Charrette Length
Charrette Pace
Quality of Participants Quality of Setting Quality of Format Quality of Content Quality of Keynote Speakers Quality of General Discussions Quality of Breakouts Discussions Quality of General Facilitation Quality of Breakouts Facilitation
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Overall Quality of Results Please list the 3 things you liked the most about the charrette: I liked… ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ I liked… ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ I liked… ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Please list the 3 things liked the least about the charrette I did not like… _________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ I did not like … ________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ I did not like … ________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Please list the 3 things you wished had been better about the charrette I wish… ______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ I wish… ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ I wish… ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________
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APPENDIX 4 Final Charrette Agenda
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Final Charrette Agenda October 13 – 15, 2004 ______________________________________________________________________________
Pre-charrette Activities •
Session 0 “On-site Registration of Charrette Participants” 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. (90 minutes) − Issue of participant badges and charrette materials − Verification of participant contact information
______________________________________________________________________________
Charrette Activities, Wednesday, October 13 (Full Afternoon Sessions) •
Session 1 “Establishing the Point of Departure for the Charrette” 1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. (75 minutes) − Official Welcome from Steering Committee [5 minutes] Presenter: J. Vanegas − Official Welcome from FIATECH [10 minutes] Presenter: R. Jackson & FIATECH Board of Directors − Official Welcome from NSF and Brief overview of Charrette Objectives [15 minutes] Presenter: J. De La Garza (NSF) − Brief overview of Charrette Logistics [10 minutes] Presenter: J. Vanegas − Introduction of Charrette Participants [15 minutes] Facilitator: J. Vanegas − Facilitated plenary discussion on, and formal documentation of, drivers and expectations from participants for the charrette [20 minutes] Facilitator: J. Vanegas
•
Coffee Break; 2:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. (15 minutes)
•
Session 2 “The FIATECH Technology Roadmap for Capital Projects – Vision Model and Tactical Plan, and the NSF Cyber Infrastructure Program” 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. (60 minutes) Formal presentation on highlights on the FIATECH Vision Model and Tactical Plan Presenters: J. Garrett and W. O’Brien
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− FIATECH Vision Model − NSF Cyber Infrastructure Program •
Coffee Break; 3:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. (15 minutes)
•
Session 3 “Academic Community Reactions to the FIATECH Roadmap” 3:45 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (75 minutes) Facilitator: J. Vanegas − [65 minutes] Facilitated plenary discussion on the reaction of the participants to the presentations the vision and the tactical plan for the FIATECH Technology Roadmap, and formal documentation of ⇒ Reactions from the “Gut” – The focus of this discussion is on the reaction from an instinctual point of view [30 minutes] ⇒ Reactions from the “Heart” – The focus of this discussion is on the reaction from an emotional point of view [30 minutes] ⇒ Reactions from the “Mind” – The focus of this discussion is on the reaction from an intellectual point of view [30 minutes] − [10 minutes] Discussion of criteria for organizing the four academic expertise clusters for break–out group discussions, and assignment of participants to each one
•
Adjourn for the Day at 5:00 p.m.
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Charrette Activities, Thursday, October 14 (Full Morning and Afternoon Sessions) •
Session 4 “Presentations by Keynote Speakers” 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. (60 minutes) − [25 minutes] Dr. Chimay Anumba; Loughborough University − [25 minutes] Dr. Ian Parmee; University of West England – Bristol − [10 minutes] Assignment of participants to each of the four academic expertise clusters for break–out group discussions
•
Session 5A “Academic Expertise Cluster Discussions of the FIATECH Roadmap – Part 1” 9:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. (105 minutes) Concurrent discussions, within each one of the four academic expertise clusters, on:
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− From an academic perspective, what are the general Strengths of the F/CPTR, and more specifically, of the F/CPTR elements assigned to each academic expertise cluster? − What are the general Opportunities posed by the F/CPTR, and more specifically, by the F/CPTR elements assigned to each academic expertise cluster, to the academic community? − From an academic perspective, what are some of the current Barriers, Obstacles, and Inhibitors for implementation of the F/CPTR, and more specifically, of the F/CPTR elements assigned to each academic expertise cluster? − What are some possible Barrier–breakers, Obstacle–removers, and Enablers for implementation of the F/CPTR, and more specifically, of the F/CPTR elements assigned to each academic expertise cluster? − Breakout Groups: ⇒ Breakout Group No. 1: Focused on the Planning and Design Phases of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 1 and 2) Facilitator: J. Vanegas ⇒ Breakout Group No. 2: Focused on the Procurement and Construction Phases of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 3 and 4) Facilitator: W. O’Brien ⇒ Breakout Group No. 3: Focused on the Operations Phase of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Element 5) Facilitator: A. Pearce ⇒ Breakout Group No. 4: Focused on the Life Cycle Integration Issues for a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 6 and 9) Facilitator: J. Garrett •
Coffee Break; 10:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. (15 minutes)
•
Session 5B “Feedback from Academic Expertise Cluster Discussions of the FIATECH Roadmap” 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon (60 minutes) Plenary presentation by each of the four Academic Expertise Cluster Representatives (10 minutes plus five minutes plenary discussion for each one) on the results from each of the academic expertise clusters discussions. Moderator: J. Vanegas
•
Lunch Break; 12:00 noon – 1:15 p.m. (75 minutes)
•
Session 6 “Presentations by Keynote Speaker” 1:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (45 minutes)
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− Dr. Francois Grobler; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) •
Session 7A “Academic Expertise Cluster In–depth Critiques of the FIATECH Roadmap” 2:00 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. (105 minutes) Concurrent critiques, within each one of the four academic expertise clusters, on: − The F/CPTR, in general − The specific F/CPTR elements assigned to each academic expertise cluster − The Focus Areas of the Tactical Plan for the implementation of the F/CPTR − Breakout Groups: ⇒ Breakout Group No. 1: Focused on the Planning and Design Phases of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 1 and 2) Facilitator: J. Vanegas ⇒ Breakout Group No. 2: Focused on the Procurement and Construction Phases of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 3 and 4) Facilitator: W. O’Brien ⇒ Breakout Group No. 3: Focused on the Operations Phase of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Element 5) Facilitator: A. Pearce ⇒ Breakout Group No. 4: Focused on the Life Cycle Integration Issues for a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 6 and 9) Facilitator: J. Garrett
•
Coffee Break; 3:45 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. (15 minutes)
•
Adjourn for the Day at 4:00 p.m.
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Charrette Activities, Friday, October 15 (Full Morning and Partial Afternoon Sessions) •
Special Session “Overview of FIATECH” 7:45 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. (15 minutes) Short overview on the history, process, and current status of development of the FIATECH Technology Roadmap for Capital Projects Presenter: R. Jackson
•
Session 7B “Feedback from Academic Expertise Cluster In–depth Critiques of the FIATECH Roadmap” Page A4–5
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. (60 minutes) Plenary presentation by each of the four Academic Expertise Cluster Representatives (10 minutes plus five minutes plenary discussion for each one) on the results from each of the academic expertise clusters discussions. Moderator: J. Vanegas •
Session 8 “Funding Opportunities in Cyberinfrastructure” 9:00 a.m. – 9:50 a.m. (50 minutes) Additional presentation on the NSF Cyber Infrastructure Program Presenter: J. Garrett
•
Coffee Break; 9:50 a.m. – 10:10 a.m. (20 minutes)
•
Session 9 “Establishing a Research Agenda for the Academic Community” 10:10 a.m. – 12:00 noon (110 minutes) Facilitator: J. Vanegas o Facilitated plenary discussion on, and formal documentation of, a research agenda for the Academic Community’s future involvement in supporting and furthering FIATECH’s vision, mission, and goals, and also the NSF Cyber Infrastructure Program [80 minutes] o Facilitated plenary discussion on, and formal documentation of any specific commitments of the participants in, and follow–up activities to, this research agenda [30 minutes]
•
Lunch Break; 12:00 noon – 1:00 p.m. (60 minutes)
•
Session 10 “Establishing a Model for Collaboration” 1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. (75 minutes) Facilitated plenary discussion on, and formal documentation of, model for collaboration in research and education programs, projects, and activities among the Academic Community, and between the Academic Community and the FIATECH Consortium Facilitator: J. Garrett
•
Session 11 “Closing Remarks” 2:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. (15 minutes) Presenter: R. Jackson
•
Charrette Adjourned at 2:30 p.m.
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APPENDIX 5 Summary of Charrette Activities
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Summary of Charrette Activities This appendix contains a summary and visual documentation of the principal activities of the Charrette. This includes a summary of the formal presentations made by members of the Charrette Steering Committee and selected charrette participants, the facilitated plenary discussions, and the facilitated breakout group discussions.
Summary of Formal Presentations Day 1 - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 •
Dr. Richard Jackson, Director of the FIATECH Consortium, “Welcome Remarks” ⇒ This presentation introduced the intent and scope of the FIATECH Roadmap initiative. It described the broad intent of the roadmap to cover all phases of the design, construction, and operations lifecycle. The Members of the FIATECH Board of Directors were introduced to the audience, and Dr. Jackson underscored the importance of this charrette to provide academic input to the further development of the Roadmap.
Figure A.5.1. Welcome Remarks by Dr. Richard Jackson and the FIATECH Board of Directors
•
Dr. Jesus M. de la Garza, National Science Foundation, “Welcome Remarks, and the NSF Goals and Expectations for the Charrette” ⇒ Dr. de la Garza provided his welcome as sponsor of the event. He described the phases of research, development, demonstration, and deployment and the role of organizations such as the National Science Foundation, FIATECH, and the Civil Engineering Research Foundation in research cycle (See Figure A.5.3).
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Figure A.5.2. Welcome Remarks by Dr. Jesus M. de la Garza
Demonstration
Deployment
CERF CERF
FIATECH FIATECH
FIATECH FIATECH
NSF NSF
Research
Deployment
Demonstration
Research
Development
NIST NIST
NIST NIST NSF NSF
Development
Figure A.5.3. Perspectives on Institutional Goals and Roles
•
Dr. Jorge Vanegas, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Welcome Remarks, and Objectives and Expected Outcomes of the Charrette” ⇒ Dr. Vanegas reviewed the agenda for the charrette as well as the objectives and expected outcomes. The main objectives were to present and discuss the functional areas of the roadmap, record participant reactions and critiques, and identify synergies between the FIATECH Roadmap initiative and the NSF Cyberinfrastructure initiative. The main outcomes were to generate alignment between the academic community and the FIATECH consortium around the roadmap, develop a national research agenda for the academic community’s further involvement in NSF funded research related to the FIATECH Roadmap, and propose methods of collaboration between the academic community and the FIATECH consortium.
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Figure A.5.4. Welcome Remarks by Dr. Jorge Vanegas
•
Dr. James Garrett, Carnegie Mellon University, “The FIATECH Vision, and an Introduction to the NSF Cyberinfrastructure Program” ⇒ Dr. Garrett briefly reviewed the 9 elements of the FIATECH Roadmap ⇒ Dr. Garrett shared his personal viewpoints on the development of the FIATECH roadmap and its links to the NSF Cyberinfrastructure program. The involvement of the construction industry in the development of the Roadmap is an unprecedented event and there is a huge opportunity for the industry and academic communities to rally around a common vision. There are significance opportunities for the academic community to act as a more formal community and leverage the existence of the FIATECH Roadmap to identify salient aspects of the NSF Cyberinfrastructure program.
Figure A.5.5. Presentation by Dr. James Garrett
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•
Dr. William O'Brien, University of Texas at Austin, “Development of the CPTR Roadmap: A Participant’s View” ⇒ Dr. O’Brien shared his personal experiences and summary thoughts based on his participation in the Integrated and Automated Procurement and Supply Network Element of the FIATECH Roadmap. The Roadmap has been development by small, volunteer teams of dedicated professionals, mostly from industry. As such, the Roadmap reflects many viewpoints and there are significant differences in detail and conflicts between specific aspects of the Roadmap. However, as a whole the Roadmap has a remarkably consistent vision that shows the impact the academic community has had educating industry about IT research.
Figure A.5.5. Presentation by Dr. William O’Brien
Day 2 - Thursday, October 14, 2004 •
Dr. Chimay Anumba; Loughborough University, “FIATECH CPTR: A European Perspective” ⇒ Dr. Anumba summarized the several complementary roadmapping activities that are taking place in the European community. At the high level, there is significant commonality of vision between the FIATCH Roadmap and European initiatives that suggest that cooperative research efforts are possible. Commonality of visions also helps validate research and development efforts, even if many research challenges remain.
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Figure A.5.6. Presentation by Dr. Chimay Anumba
•
Dr. Ian Parmee; University of West England – Bristol, “Computational Intelligence and Civil Engineering – Perceived Problems and Possible Solutions” ⇒ Dr. Parmee focused his remarks around experiences researching and deploying intelligent information technologies to support design and construction practice. There is a need as part of research efforts and roadmap development to specify the role of the professional and ensure that tools are designed to assist rather than replace human decision-making. Beyond research needs in developing such tools, Dr. Parmee advocated the education of generalized engineering students with skills in computation so they can make better use of emerging tools.
Figure A.5.7. Presentation by Dr. Ian Parmee
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•
Dr. Francois Grobler; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL), “IFC-BIM: The Bamboo Seed in Year Five” ⇒ Dr. Grobler presented the current state of development and deployment of the Industry Foundation Classes and Building Information Model initiatives. The IFC is widely supported in many applications and is starting to be used by many firms and government organizations around the globe, including the General Services administration in the United States. The IFC provide a common standard for rapid deployment of Building Information Modules and as such should be evaluated for support of the FIATECH Roadmap elements.
Figure A.5.8. Presentation by Dr. Francois Grobler
Day 3 - Friday, October 15, 2004 •
Dr. Richard Jackson, Director of the FIATECH Consortium, “FIATECH 101” ⇒ This presentation provided an overview of FIATECH, its history, and its membership. It also provided a brief historical perspective on the evolution of the Technology Roadmap initiative, and a glimpse at where this initiative is going in the future.
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Figure A.5.9. Presentation by Dr. Richard Jackson
•
Dr. James Garrett, Carnegie Mellon University, “The NSF Cyberinfrastructure” ⇒ Building from the discussions in the workshop, Dr. Garrett summarized in more detail the extent and scope of the NSF Cyberinfrastructure and its possible relationship to the academic construction community. The Cyberinfrastructure calls for development of a national, reliable and dynamic, interoperable and integrated system of hardware, software, and data resources and services. The intent is to revolutionize the practice of science and engineering research. We need to understand the implications of this multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment on the NSF for the conduct of our research. We also should approach this effort as a community with a unified voice.
Figure A.5.10. Presentation by Dr. James Garrett
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•
Dr. Richard Jackson, Director of the FIATECH Consortium, “Closing Remarks” ⇒ Dr. Jackson provided a brief synopsis of his reaction to the charrette, and communicated his enthusiasm on the results obtained. He invited the academic community to participate more actively in FIATECH, and issued a challenge to the participants to maintain the momentum gained in the charrette, and eventually become a more visible and active force in the development of solutions, in partnership with industry, for capital facilities.
Figure A.5.11. Closing Remarks by Dr. Richard Jackson
Facilitated Plenary Discussions Day 1 - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 •
Within Session 1 “Establishing the Point of Departure for the Charrette” − Facilitator: J. Vanegas This facilitated plenary focused on a discussion on, and formal documentation of, drivers and expectations from participants for the charrette. The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 6.
•
Within Session 3 “Academic Community Reactions to the FIATECH Roadmap” − Facilitator: J. Vanegas This facilitated plenary focused on a discussion on, and formal documentation of, the reaction of the participants to the overall F/CPTR, to any of the elements of the vision model, and/or to any of the focus areas of the tactical plan. : o Reactions from the “Gut” – This discussion focused on the initial reaction of the participants, from an instinctual point of view, i.e., based on their academic or professional experience.
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o Reactions from the “Heart” – This discussion focused on the reaction of the participants, from an emotional point of view, i.e., based on the kind of emotions that the F/CPTR elicits from them. o Reactions from the “Mind” – This discussion focused on the reaction of the participants, from an intellectual point of view, i.e., based on the strength of the theoretical foundation of the F/CPTR. The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 7. Day 2 - Thursday, October 14, 2004 Day 2 of the charrette did not have any plenary discussions. Day 3 - Friday, October 15, 2004 •
Within Session 9 “Establishing a Research Agenda for the Academic Community” − Facilitator: J. Vanegas This facilitated plenary focused on a discussion on, and formal documentation of: o Specific research questions, from an academic perspective, which stem from the F/CPTR, including how they address the NSF criteria of intellectual merit and broader impact. These questions provide a basis for the development of a research agenda for the Academic Community’s future involvement in supporting and furthering FIATECH’s vision, mission, and goals, and also the NSF Cyber Infrastructure Program. The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 10. o Specific commitments of the participants in, and follow–up activities to, this research agenda. The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 11.
•
Within Session 10 “Establishing a Model for Collaboration” − Facilitator: J. Garrett This facilitated plenary focused on a discussion on, and formal documentation of, opportunities for collaboration in research and education programs, projects, and activities among the Academic Community, and between the Academic Community and the FIATECH Consortium. The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 12.
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Figure A.5.12. Sample of Plenary Discussions
Breakout Group Discussions and Presentations Day 1 - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 Day 1 of the charrette did not have any breakout group discussions. Day 2 - Thursday, October 14, 2004 •
Within Session 5A “Academic Expertise Cluster Discussions of the FIATECH Roadmap,” and within Session 5B “Feedback from Academic Expertise Cluster Discussions of the FIATECH Roadmap” ⇒ Breakout Group No. 1 Facilitator: J. Vanegas This facilitated breakout group focused on a discussion, from an academic perspective, of the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, of the Planning and Design Phases of a Capital Project (Element 1 – Scenario-based Project Planning,
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and Element 2 – Automated Design of the F/CPTR). It also included formal documentation of the: o General Strengths and Opportunities posed by the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, by these two elements o Current Barriers, Obstacles, and Inhibitors for implementation of the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, of these two elements, and some possible Barrier–breakers, Obstacle–removers, and Enablers for implementation The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 8.
Figure A.5.13. Breakout Group No. 1
⇒ Breakout Group No. 2 Facilitator: W. O’Brien This facilitated breakout group focused on a discussion, from an academic perspective, of the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, of the Procurement and Construction Phases of a Capital Project (Element 3 – Integrated, Automated Procurement & Supply Network, and Element 4 – Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site of the F/CPTR). It also included formal documentation of the: o General Strengths and Opportunities posed by the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, by these two elements o Current Barriers, Obstacles, and Inhibitors for implementation of the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, of these two elements, and some possible Barrier–breakers, Obstacle–removers, and Enablers for implementation The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 8.
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Figure A.5.14. Breakout Group No. 2
⇒ Breakout Group No. 3 Facilitator: A. Pearce This facilitated breakout group focused on a discussion, from an academic perspective, of the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, of the Operations Phase of a Capital Project (Element 5 – Intelligent Self-maintaining and Repairing Operational Facility of the F/CPTR). It also included formal documentation of the: o General Strengths and Opportunities posed by the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, by this element o Current Barriers, Obstacles, and Inhibitors for implementation of the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, of this element, and some possible Barrier– breakers, Obstacle–removers, and Enablers for implementation The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 8.
Figure A.5.15. Breakout Group No. 3
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⇒ Breakout Group No. 4 Facilitator: J. Garrett This facilitated breakout group focused on a discussion, from an academic perspective, of the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, of the Life Cycle Integration Issues of a Capital Project (Element 6 – Real-time Project and Facility Management, Coordination and Control, and Element 9 – Lifecycle Data Management & Information Integration of the F/CPTR). It also included formal documentation of the: o General Strengths and Opportunities posed by the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, by these two elements o Current Barriers, Obstacles, and Inhibitors for implementation of the F/CPTR in general, and more specifically, of these two elements, and some possible Barrier–breakers, Obstacle–removers, and Enablers for implementation The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 8.
Figure A.5.16. Breakout Group No. 4
•
Session 7A “Academic Expertise Cluster In–depth Critiques of the FIATECH Roadmap,” and within Session 7B “Feedback from Academic Expertise Cluster In–depth Critiques of the FIATECH Roadmap” ⇒ Breakout Group No. 1 Facilitator: J. Vanegas This facilitated breakout group focused an in-depth critique from an academic perspective (i.e., what participants liked and did not like, including the reasons for liking and not liking), of: o General critique of the overall F/CPTR o Specific critique of Element 1 – Scenario-based Project Planning, and Element 2 – Automated Design of the F/CPTR Page 5-14
o Specific critique of the focus areas of the Tactical Plan associated with these elements The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 9. ⇒ Breakout Group No. 2 Facilitator: W. O’Brien This facilitated breakout group focused an in-depth critique from an academic perspective (i.e., what participants liked and did not like, including the reasons for liking and not liking), of: o General critique of the overall F/CPTR o Specific critique of Element 3 – Integrated, Automated Procurement & Supply Network, and Element 4 – Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site of the F/CPTR o Specific critique of the focus areas of the Tactical Plan associated with these elements The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 9. ⇒ Breakout Group No. 3 Facilitator: A. Pearce This facilitated breakout group focused an in-depth critique from an academic perspective (i.e., what participants liked and did not like, including the reasons for liking and not liking), of: o General critique of the overall F/CPTR o Specific critique of Element 5 – Intelligent Self-maintaining and Repairing Operational Facility of the F/CPTR o Specific critique of the focus areas of the Tactical Plan associated with these elements The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 9. ⇒ Breakout Group No. 4 Facilitator: J. Garrett This facilitated breakout group focused an in-depth critique from an academic perspective (i.e., what participants liked and did not like, including the reasons for liking and not liking), of: o General critique of the overall F/CPTR
Page 5-15
o Specific critique of Element 6 – Real-time Project and Facility Management, Coordination and Control, and Element 9 – Lifecycle Data Management & Information Integration of the F/CPTR o Specific critique of the focus areas of the Tactical Plan associated with these elements The complete set of results of this discussion is included in Appendix 9.
Figure A.5.17. Sample Breakout Group Presentations
Day 3 - Friday, October 15, 2004 Day 3 of the charrette did not have any breakout group discussions or presentations.
Page 5-16
APPENDIX 6 Drivers and Expectations
Page A6–1
Drivers and Expectations This appendix contains a synthesis of the principal drivers and expectations of the participants in the charrette, and the full set of results as captured during the charrette.
Synthesis A set of key drivers and expectations that brought participants to the charrette were to find out, to learn, and to understand, at three different levels of point of view: •
From an individual perspective, some participants clearly stated their interest in obtaining new and fresh ideas from the F/CPTR initiative for their research and education programs and projects, and also, in educating themselves on where the future of the A/E/C industry is going, in order to better help their students. Some participants also wanted to identify strategies to further both their individual and the academic community’s common research objectives.
•
From a F/CPTR perspective, some participants expressed a desire to learn more about this initiative and all that it represents, particularly FIATECH’s vision and strategies for the implementation of the roadmap, as well as obstacles, hurdles, and institutional factors affecting any efforts to do so. In addition, some participants wanted to establish if the F/CPTR initiative had a solid foundation, momentum, and potential for success. Also, there was interest in gathering information on the voids of knowledge that are not included in the current version of the F/CPTR, on real research issues, and on the different elements that need to come together to keep the initiative alive and well. Finally, some expressed an interest in what the role of the academic community was or could be within the F/CPTR initiative.
•
From a broader perspective, some participants stated their interest in establishing the difference between the Information Technology (IT) in the A/E/C industry and other IT efforts, particularly what makes A/E/C IT special, and how can the academic community use this uniqueness to get research funding.
A second set of key drivers and expectations that brought participants to the charrette included: to build bridges, to create synergy and leverage and to influence. •
Several participants expressed a sincere desire to create new mechanisms or strengthen existing ones, to link the academic community and industry in a closer interface of collaboration; to link the F/CPTR to other road mapping efforts such as PATH; to link the facilities management and the infrastructure management domains; to link the EPC industry, which appears to have been the primary focus of the F/CPTR initiative, and the A/E/C industry; and to link researchers from various countries, especially those represented in the charrette.
•
In addition, participants wanted to help develop, and be part of, an academic community with active commitment and involvement from all members of this
Page A6–2
community in the F/CPTR initiative, and with synergy that can be sustained long term, in order to gain the leverage only a large critical mass can have. Some saw this event as an opportunity to increase the existing pool of research funding, and to pursue new opportunities at even larger levels of funding. Others saw this event as an opportunity to increase the size of the brain trust in the AEC industry. •
Finally, some participants saw the opportunity to influence where research investments could be made, especially within NSF; to make the F/CPTR more rigorous from an academic perspective; and to ensure that their specific research areas are included in the F/CPTR, especially if they were not explicitly addressed in the current version of the roadmap.
A third set of key drivers and expectations that brought participants to the charrette included: to contribute, to interact and align and to gauge and validate. •
Some participants expressed their formal intent to contribute to the F/CPTR initiative by filling in the voids not addressed by the current version of the roadmap, and get the initiative moving faster, and benefit from the positive changes it would bring to the AEC industry and the world. Some also expressed an interest in sharing their knowledge and experience in prior related efforts, and provide some level of continuity between the past and the future. As members of the academic community, many acknowledged the serious responsibility that this community has, to make sure that the F/CPTR includes the academic perspective, and that it is a good product.
•
Many participants acknowledged the unique opportunity to be with people who share similar interests and visions, all in the same room focused on the same objectives, sharing successes and failures, listening to others while giving their own opinions, finding out who had similar ideas to their own or shared their interests in this field, and identifying opportunities to collaborate with others. Some also wanted to see the level of alignment between the international perspectives, especially the European ones, and the F/CPTR; between their personal goals and the broader goals of their institutions; and between the elements of the F/CPTR and their graduate research programs.
•
Finally, some participants decided to participate in the event to validate if there is a solid need for the effort done with the F/CPTR to date, to gauge the work being done in this field in the various countries represented, and also to obtain personal validation of their own work and further their commitment to their areas of expertise. Some, who are F/CPTR champion wanted to obtain feedback from the rest of the participants on the roadmap.
Consolidated Results from the Facilitated Plenary Discussion The following material was collected through the facilitated plenary discussion held during Session 1 of the charrette. These comments have not been edited in any way, and reflect ideas presented for discussion by the participants in the charrette.
Page A6–3
Why are you here? I would like to… •
Contribute to the F/CPTR initiative
•
Get out of Dean’s office, i.e., focus for a short period of time on something I really want to do, rather than on what I need to do
•
Understand more about the F/CPTR initiative
•
Further my commitment to integration and computational intelligence
•
Influence research directions, especially of NSF
•
Obtain new and fresh ideas
•
Educate myself in order to better help my students
•
Build bridges between countries, especially those represented at the workshop
•
Learn new things, share lots of legacies, and provide some level of continuity between old and new
•
Find out more about where the future of the A/E/C industry is going
•
Link the F/CPTR to other road mapping efforts such as PATH
•
Bridge the industry and academic interface
•
Fill in the voids not addressed by the F/CPTR
•
Get the map moving!
•
Overcome the feeling of loneliness among other colleagues who do not share my interests in this field
•
Understand better what is our role as members of the academic community within the F/CPTR initiative
•
Obtain personal validation of what I am doing, compared to what is going on in the various countries represented at the workshop
•
Understand institutional factors affecting the implementation of the F/CPTR vision (i.e., find these factors, and change them!)
Page A6–4
•
Learn the difference between the A/E/C IT and other IT efforts – i.e., what makes A/E/C IT special and how can we use this uniqueness to get research funding?
•
To bridge facilities management and infrastructure management
•
See alignment of international perspectives, especially the European ones
•
See the different parts of the glue that will keep the F/CPTR initiative alive and well (i.e., the puzzle presented by Dr. De la Garza)
•
Ensure that my research area (sustainability) is included in the F/CPTR, because I did not see much of this area represented in the current version of the roadmap
I am here… •
As a F/CPTR champion, and would like to get feedback from the rest of the participants
•
In search of integration
•
To listen and to give my opinions
•
To try to get research funding, and to identify opportunities to collaborate with others
•
To share successes and failures
•
To find out how well we have been doing
•
To change the world
•
To find out real research issues
•
Because this is a rare opportunity to be with people who share similar interests and visions, all in the same room focused on the same thing
•
To be together with other “birds of a feather”
What do you expect to get out of this charrette? I would like to… •
Understand better the F/CPTR and all that it represents
•
Align my personal goals with broader institutional goals
•
Find out and identify other people with whom I can collaborate
Page A6–5
•
See active commitment and involvement from all participants in the F/CPTR initiative
•
Understand all the obstacles and hurdles as we move ahead toward implementation of the F/CPTR
•
Get lots of new ideas for my research and education programs
•
Identify specific funding opportunities
•
Have us develop a sense of community, so we can get closer and gain the leverage you can only get out of a larger critical mass
•
Align my graduate research program with elements of the F/CPTR
•
Identify mechanisms on how to build research bridges among countries
•
Have many of the participants in the charrette agree with my ideas
•
Get strategies to further both my individual, and our community’s, common research objectives
•
Get plenty of new ideas for research projects
•
Find out if the F/CPTR initiative has real legs, momentum, and potential for success
•
Validate if there is a solid need for the effort done with the F/CPTR to date
•
Understand FIATECH’s vision for implementation of the F/CPTR, and their strategy for achieving it
•
Grow the pool of research in this area
•
Get information on the voids of knowledge that are not included in the current version of the F/CPTR
•
Be part of a community with synergy that can be sustained long term
•
Make the F/CPTR more rigorous from an academic perspective
•
Increase the size of the brain trust in our industry
•
Acknowledge the serious responsibility that we have as academics, to make sure that the F/CPTR includes the academic perspective, and that it is a good product
•
Gauge and calibrate what is going on in the various countries represented
Page A6–6
•
Use this charrette as an opportunity to go after bigger fish, in terms of research funding
•
Be in a warm climate, at least for a little while!
•
Use this event as a means to bridge the A/E/C industry and the EPC industry, which is clearly the focus of what FIATECH is all about
•
Make sure my specific research area is included in the roadmap!
Page A6–7
APPENDIX 7 Reactions
Page A7–1
Reactions This appendix contains the full set of reactions of the participants in the charrette to the F/CPTR. The material contained in this section was collected through the Formal Input Sheets No. 1 submitted prior to the charrette and posted on the charrette web site, and also, submitted during the charrette. It also contains material collected through the facilitated plenary discussion held during Session 3 of the charrette. These comments have not been edited beyond basic spelling, grammar, and formatting modifications, and reflect ideas as originally presented by the contributors for discussion in the charrette. Consequently, some redundancy was unavoidable.
Reactions from the “Gut” Consolidated Results from Pre-charrette Formal Input Sheets •
The general framework is well thought and organized. The vision can immediately give me what is going on in the past, now, and future. However, there are plenty holes needed to be filled
•
The idea of a roadmap is extremely valuable; however, getting the proper and sufficient input is difficult, yet vital. The Roadmap is driven from the perspective of those writing the document and with lack of proper and in-depth input can be leading down the wrong path. It is vital to have end user input, not technology providers that could be perceived as trying to sell a product. Very difficult line to walk.
•
The Technology Roadmap appears to provide a comprehensive view of many components of the planning, design, construction and facility management processes for, which there may be opportunities to apply current and still developing technologies to add value to such processes. The overall result of this effort could include, but is not limited to, better assessment of owners' needs and definition of projects' scope, reducing costs, reducing the time for design and construction, improving the quality of performance and generally enhancing the ability of the parties involved in the process to manage their work and make better decisions throughout the process. For someone that has recently entered academia, my initial sense is that the practical application of some of the initiatives in an industry in, which a significant amount of work and decision-making is still "by the seat of the pants”, may face significant hurdles. One of the most significant hurdles might be resistance to change. There are also many institutional biases (e.g., protecting business interests and avoiding legal liability) by parties in the construction process that may need to be overcome.
•
The development of the roadmap is timely and very much needed to bring the construction industry to the 21 century. The published road map is largely focusing on the technical issues and process and people issues roadmap should be developed concurrently with the technology roadmap. Part of the roadmap, in particular automating what might be seen by the industry as
Page A7–2
creative or/and judgmental issues, is not realistic. The human input is essential and systems should be seen as decision-support and rather than decision-making. •
The Roadmap is comprehensive and addresses all the key phases of capital projects
•
I like the idea of roadmap. It helps streamline the efforts of academics for our work to move in tandem. Moreover, I commend the work done in formalizing the roadmap. It is: Very clear: It shows the flow of information in clear way, and sets clear milestones/research clusters Easy to understand: any one with a background in construction IT can follow the roadmap Comprehensive coverage: covers the whole life cycle of projects I guess I am a forest-oriented person so I liked having a top level roadmap. I even use it as a template for my students.
•
My instincts tell me that the vision put forth by FIATECH is on target and if achieved will cause a significant step change in the performance of the construction industry. Many other unanticipated benefits will accrue from achieving this benefit. It is exciting to see a large number of industrial organizations coming together to define a common vision. My instincts also tell me that the time is now ripe for achieving such a vision. My gut tells me if we do not aggressively move towards this vision, the construction industry may see drastic changes from other forces beyond our control.
•
This map provides a global evaluation and response to some the most important issues facing the construction industry. My instinctual response is guarded concern over the ability of this vision to make significant inroads on the issues facing our industry. Even with the detailed breakdown of the roadmap elements, it is unclear to me how this vision will be achieved.
•
My initial reaction is that there I see no formal system dedicated to transferring all this knowledge, once it has been put in place to the ultimate end users. We need to develop concurrently with the Roadmap an education and training component, otherwise the whole roadmap will be condemned to stay in our labs and in our academic circles. Ultimately, for a lot of these systems to be successful, we need them to be adapted and accepted at the field operations level. I do not think we have paid too much attention to the jobsite nor have we done many studies to understand how most of our potential end-users work, nor have we gauged the impact of what we are doing on the field.
•
The FIATECH initiative is a commendable effort that promises to bring together AEC participants - academia, industry, government standardizing agencies, and funding agencies, etc. - to address the critical issues confronting our industry today. The plan is solid and well grounded in reality to be practical for implementation and I look forward to contributing to the effort.
Page A7–3
•
My "instinctual" view is that it is good to see a nationally coordinated consortium effort to help bring technologies to the life cycle process of capital projects. There have been various centers and research programs that deal with this very line of research and outreach over the years. Hopefully, this consortium effort will have more outreaching effects to the industry than in the past. At least, from the perspectives of the technologies, they are now far more mature and potentially useful for the tasks laid out in the "roadmap."
•
The FIATECH technology roadmap and tactical plans are the best effort I have seen and definitely the most comprehensive to address emerging and new technologies in the A/E/C industry. It serves well to bring together various consortia, government agencies, industry, academia, and other trade organizations to address the technology issues. The plan is solid and well thought out. The goals are quite ambitious, but I guess more details are being worked out. One suggestion I would make is to recognize the potential of projects crossing over different critical elements, as outlined in the roadmap. It also makes sense to establish a structure so that projects within different tactical plans can collaborate and interface easily. This provision will provide the flexibility needed to address interface or integration issues.
•
My background is largely in developing systems for designers. I've been working in this area for nearly 20 years. One thing I've learned in that time is that trying to automate the design process doesn't work. There are several reasons for this, the main ones being that computer systems don't possess common sense and real world knowledge and we just can't devise smart enough systems. What we should be aiming for is systems that help designers but still leave the ultimate decision making process with the human being. Automated design just isn't possible within the foreseeable future.
•
The title of Element 2, which is "Automated Design", seems inappropriate. It would be better to title it "Design Support". Designers need to be in control of the solutions they propose and the process to generate them. They are the ones that are liable anyway. They won't be interested in a black box that will propose complete solutions to them. There are several proposed projects that hold much potential and would be of interest to academic partners, e.g., virtual design environment, design advisors, and design/reuse capability, among others.
•
The vision and tactical plan for the FIATECG Technology roadmap should include the roadmaps based on IT and Construction perspectives. The roadmap is beneficial to the construction industry but IT industry may be involved to implement the roadmap.
•
My instincts tell me that the FIATECH roadmap will allow our industry and our academic discipline to see the big picture and allow us to develop an overarching vision for our work. Our industry and our academic discipline are highly fragmented and the roadmap might provide the much needed glue. It also provides a much needed
Page A7–4
investment plan and launching pad for forging partnerships between industry, government and academia. History provides numerous examples of such partnerships revolutionizing other sectors of the economy such as agriculture, semiconductors and automotive. •
My gut reaction is that there are a lot of buzz words and that there is a risk of failure. However, I am excited by the possibility that true industrial involvement is possible.
•
My instinctual reaction is that for the first time we have an opportunity to have a significant impact improving the Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Facility Management (AEC/FM) industry a well-known underperforming sector of the economy all over the world. If successful the vision developed by FIATECH could be a wonderful opportunity to bridge the industry/academia gap allowing every interested party to better understand their roles in improving this industry performance.
•
The Technology Roadmap is the first industry document that I have seen that takes a comprehensive look at the technological solutions that may be used to improve the efficiency of the capital process industry. As such it shows that the industry is starting to understand the impact of technology on their business and understands that the nature of the industry required combined efforts in order to speed up the process of development and adoption of technology.
•
I like the vision. My overall impression is that the tactical plan is very overwhelming. Perhaps too many focus areas and too many topics within the focus areas.
•
My instinctual reaction is that the roadmap represents a laudable and rational attempt to modernize the construction industry. As has been stated in the Charrette reading materials the construction industry lags behind other industries in the application of advanced technologies. I also feel that there are many potential problems with the implementation of the road map. In particular, I believe the fragmentation of the industry may make it difficult to develop any overall standard technology frameworks. I also believe that in-hand with the advancement of technology there is a need of a better understanding of what changes need to be made in the construction industry so that advances in technology can be more readily accepted and integrated into practice. I don't believe management and organizational issues can be ignored to concentrate only on the development of new information technologies.
•
My first reaction was that the initiative would be certainly helpful for building a new momentum to advance the technologies applied in the industry and that the roadmap seemed to be very well aligned to serve this purpose.
Consolidated Results from Charrette Formal Input Sheets •
Same old, same old, but updated with IT jargon; they don’t know what they are getting into.
Page A7–5
•
Conceptually OK, but where does the rubber meet the road?
•
What do we react to with IT? It seems company led but not business driven. No metrics for evaluating it.
•
Don’t know what the role of academics is – research component is unrecognized.
•
Industry buy-in is great, but too far removed from my research heart.
•
There is a lot of work to do.
•
It’s a fantastic opportunity to build momentum between academics and industry, but where do we want to go? There is no money, and it doesn’t translate into profits.
•
How do you choose as you go along – one or the other?
•
If we look at the CPTR as a whole, it shows that could be very hard and could be very discouraging.
•
We need to divide the CPTR into more manageable sub-components.
•
Need a detailed execution plan!
•
Broad and bold agenda to bring the construction community together.
•
Concerned about its ability to make a significant impact because the devil is in the details.
•
Soft and hard issues missing – not addressed in a combined manner.
•
How can you talk effectively about technology without the business and management implications?
•
The F/CPTR presents an IT vision, not a process vision.
•
The F/CPTR is EPC oriented.
•
Impacts on IT investment, and benefits from IT investment.
•
Perspectives of both IT and CEM.
•
Three types of research: trail blazer, frontier, and settlement.
•
Financial/cost effective.
•
Should be componentized.
Page A7–6
•
IT Construction = an independent market.
•
Persuade IT industry to come to the CEM – motivation for whom? IT or CEM?
•
What to share this market with IT.
•
Oh dear! Not another roadmap!
•
Tremendous opportunity, but how will it be delivered?
•
Concept of a roadmap is good.
•
I don’t like the idea of automated design.
•
The form of the roadmap is fixed on current technology – we need to allow for process change.
•
The roadmap is too wordy – it needs to be condensed down into single ideas.
•
Lots of holes need to be filled.
•
We agree with Bill – it’s essential for the academic community.
•
There is an initial sense that the practical application of some of the roadmap’s initiatives in an industry in which a significant amount of work and decision-making is made “by the seat of the pants”, may face significant hurdles. There may be certain institutional biases, such as protecting business interests and avoiding legal liability! Also, are there individuals and entities that are able to actually implement these initiatives?
•
Holy cow! What a lot of work has been done.
•
What is the motivation for the participants? How well informed were they? Are they the best and the brightest, or the ones with time on their hands?
•
What has been the buy-in process from other non-CII, FIATECH firms?
•
Educational component? Tech transfer implementation?
•
The devil is in the details.
•
Roadmap is a good vision to form a foundation to help understand the interfaces and influences on the project.
•
This is a fantastic opportunity. In my knowledge, it is the first time that industry collaborated at this level of effort to come up with a clear understanding of their
Page A7–7
needs and future. I saw it as an opportunity to build bridges with industry and to check the direction of my research and define its future directions. •
This is hard and too big – it needs to have smaller chunks than big vision.
•
The roadmap elements as defined aren’t right.
•
Manageable subcomponents.
•
Tremendous opportunity.
•
The FIATECH roadmap has successfully brought together the widest spectrum of stakeholders – academics, industry, government agencies, and funding agencies – to the table with the common objective of identifying a vision. Instinctually, I am inclined to say that this cannot fail, but I also think the logistics are overwhelming.
•
The roadmap is important in the way it presents an attempt at a unified vision for technology needs. It seems to lack a lot on the tactical level.
•
Industry-wide, industry accepted vision.
•
Automated design is not a proper title. Designers want to be in control.
•
Conceptual design fell out of the loop.
•
Good to have industry buy-in.
•
Concern for business plan of roadmap/FIATECH.
•
Same old, same old.
•
Implementation.
•
How are they going to implement this plan?
•
My first reaction was the roadmap has a plan to create some momentum that can potentially bring different groups of people together to create some useful things for the industry.
•
The tactical plans are not well integrated. I can imagine various pieces being developed in piecemeal fashion without any cohesive organization. Detailed RFP’s could force collaboration!
•
Need a bridge plan – how to move forward as a whole?
Page A7–8
•
Having a roadmap does somewhat freeze the process – how can we overcome this? Maybe through a functionality orientation of the map (i.e., performance-based specifications), not technology/solution orientation.
•
The roadmap needs to be the outcome of a requirements analysis process, not a Christmas list of high tech dreams.
•
Here we go again.
•
Overwhelming. Overload.
•
Big challenge – exciting.
•
Monolithic vision, islands at the lower level.
•
Problems change with time.
•
Industry still largely seat of the pants.
•
Who would run the technology?
•
Hope springs eternal.
•
Different entities accrue benefits from those who incur costs. Who is pulling and who is pushing?
•
Technology roadmap needs a people/process roadmap.
•
Business interests, legal ramifications, liability, intellectual property.
•
Company-led, but not business-driven.
•
It is an exciting vision – especially coming from industry.
•
It is somewhat too overwhelming with every aspect.
•
Research vs. development.
•
What would be left over for other researchers to investigate when all roadmaps are actually accomplished, if they could be accomplished?
•
Would practitioners actually get moved as we want, or as the results of the FIATECH roadmap?
•
It is a big, grand plan.
•
Lacks social and human factors – too techie.
Page A7–9
•
Marketing/deployment.
•
Where is the push?
•
Somebody did a lot of work!
•
Things are called differently – new jargon for old ideas.
•
A lot of overlaps between nine tactical plans.
•
Company-led but not business driven.
•
Overarching vision is important and challenging.
•
First big and bold integrated vision in public domain.
•
IT-focused, view of limited stakeholders, and no cultural or social factors.
•
See the elephant.
•
Good mother and apple pie vision but nothing new or exciting except industry involvement. Good that it’s documented. Mostly IT vision – does not focus on process change.
•
Adapt technology to process or process to technology?
•
Lack of an educational component to transfer from academia to actual users.
•
Soft science vs. hard science.
•
Problem looking for a solution, or vice versa?
•
Systemic vs. autonomous solution.
•
Global vision of what is going on.
•
A lot of holes need to be filled in.
•
The plan is very ambitious and comprehensive. The most difficult part is “where the rubber meets the road”.
•
Very academic/research-oriented view or view from the large EPC industry/companies.
•
Who are the customers of the technology?
•
Comprehensive at the conceptual level, but full of gaps at focus areas.
Page A7–10
•
Wagon before the horse? The background material describes the changing environment. Then there is a gap: use technology to automate and integrate. But environmental changes lead to new business needs, new business models and strategies. Technology can support these new models and strategies.
•
Great, but build in flexibility to allow for new needs/changing needs.
•
The roadmap is extremely ambitious but not overly so. It cannot be realized without close collaboration with the NSF Cyberinfrastructure program. The NSF program will provide access to underlying knowledge, skills, and capabilities from many disciplines. We cannot develop these purely within civil engineering.
•
Piecemeal approach of deliverables, not monolithic.
•
Functional requirements rather than a wish list of solutions.
•
Persuade IT industry to bring in technology.
•
Systematic and comprehensive coverage of capital projects delivery.
Consolidated Results from Charrette Facilitated Plenary Discussion •
This is a fantastic opportunity, it’s a “no brainer” and the industry needs to do it; however, it will require too much work.
•
The roadmap has too much of a “techie” flavor and human factors should be more explicitly acknowledged.
•
It’s not clear what is the primary driver of the CPTR. Is it SIMATECH? Is it competition? Is it the worry caused by an economic problem?
•
It is not clear whether FIATECH is being pushed by the highest level of an organization (CEO), or by the technical personnel of the organization?
•
From a practical perspective, the implementation of all aspects of the roadmap goes against the prevailing culture of “seat of the pants” decision-making. This raises the question of who is going to actually implement all elements of the roadmap.
•
The roadmap provides a first big bold attempt at integration currently in the public domain. However, it is focused and addresses a limited set of stakeholders, leaving out of it any cultural or social issues.
•
“Oh Lord, not another roadmap!”
•
The roadmap has a very large scope, and thus requires that it be broken up in manageable parts.
Page A7–11
•
The FIATECH effort seems to be company-led, not business driven. This is an important distinction, because the metrics for each are different.
•
The roadmap in its current form does not address some fundamental issues affecting the industry, and as a result, it increases the potential of pitfalls.
•
The roadmap is ambitious. It needs a large knowledge set. It is monolithic and it also seems to be a piecemeal approach. The elements address a broad spectrum of topics and issues, and because they are represented as a single element, the nuances and subtleties.
•
It does not capture the full extent of project types, stakeholder demographics/education, processes involved.
•
The focus areas and projects have no organizing structure – how do you know they’re going to be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive?
•
The roadmap in its current form fails to capture the complex range of interrelationships, interdependencies, and interactions among specific components within each element, i.e., focus areas and projects.
•
It is nice to see what industry is striving for and as a result, the roadmap is a worthwhile effort.
•
The roadmap can lead to confusion because after digging to go beyond the technical jargon and the futuristic goals, at its core the roadmap can be also looked at as a consolidation of established old ideas.
Reactions from the “Heart” Consolidated Results from Pre-charrette Formal Input Sheets •
The overall road map does hit my heart. I have to admire all the efforts that have been done and prepared up so far. The tactical plans that interest me are (1) Enabled workforce: the workforce in the 21st century will very likely deviate from the past dramatically. How to educate and train them in the global economy? It is a very challenging issue for many, particularly for academia, (2) New Materials, Products, Methods, and Equipment: There are many issues have be addressed. If we want to have big leap of improvement and enhance the global competitiveness, innovative ways to execute the capital projects likely will lead more big-jump results
•
The Roadmap is a great vision of the future and stirs excitement about the potential, although overwhelming as to the amount of work needed for accomplishing the vision. The most difficult portion will be to move the fragmented players in a common direction. How do we encourage competitors to work together to share when they consider their "technology" to be their competitive edge?
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•
My "emotional" reaction is that I am glad to see that there is a considerable amount of interest by entities and individuals in the industry to work collaboratively on solutions.
•
The idea of the road map is exciting and sexy. The Integrated Automation Procurement and Supply Network and The Intelligent and Automated Construction Job Site look very interesting and promising.
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The Roadmap presents several challenges and issues, which can be addressed with current technological options. However, achieving the outlined objectives of the roadmap would require further developments beyond considerations of capital projects and technology.
•
My only feeling is that there are not enough mechanisms to sustain the roadmap. There seems to be no effective business plan to keep academic working on the roadmap and making sure industry will implement it. I also sense some form of finality in the plans. We should keep in mind that such plans are never final.
•
The Roadmap is an excellent and necessary mechanism for advancing our industry/profession. It recognizes the need to identify the broad goal and then work out how to get there from here, rather than meandering aimlessly leaving the evolution of the discipline to chance. On the other hand, we should be wary of having a too rigorous plan of action that stifles creativity/serendipity, is unable to adapt to unperceived or changing needs, and/or is unable to embrace previously unforeseen technologies.
•
I am encouraged that the bigger picture is being considered, but worry whether the initiative will be able to influence enough of the key organizations for long enough to achieve these goals. I hope that the momentum does not fizzle out. But of course, we should try to do this and make it work, given that the rewards are potentially great.
•
The vision as it is stated makes it sound like all that is really left to do is to deploy all of the technology that has already been developed by academic and industry. While there is a great deal of technology that has yet to be taken up and deployed by the construction industry, most of it is focused on a specific aspect of the industry's needs, but the integration issues are hard and not yet addressed to the level needed. A great deal of applied research still lies behind making the stated vision a reality, but I am not sure that this issue is appreciated. The visions stated for the earlier phases of the facility delivery process are assuming that it is currently possible to create knowledge-based approaches for design automation, which are specifying solutions (e.g., rule-based design experts) and not what is actually needed at these stages. I feel this to be true in most of the tactical plans.
•
The roadmap is impressive in terms of goals and intent, and expanding the scope of efforts to improve our industry. However, I am cautious about the underlying
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approach proposed in the model. The model seems to suggest "one" best way to achieving dramatic industry performance improvement. Key stakeholders are missing from the model (or at least underplayed), especially owners and building users. •
The FIATECH initiative attempts to bring together the widest spectrum of "stakeholders" in the AEC arena - academics, industry, standardizing agencies (e.g. NIST), and funding agencies (e.g. NSF) - to the table with the common objective of defining the very future of our industry. With so many minds with different perspectives working in unison towards a common goal, I am emotionally inclined to conclude that nothing can go wrong and that the outcome will only be positive for our industry.
•
The industry as a whole is fragmented but also very broad. It is not only about neither design nor construction. If we really talk about "lifecycle", a capital project would involve politics, environmental issues, finance, engineering and many other issues. Our "emotional" tie, I assume, is dealing with the engineering issues -- upstream from architecture or planning and downstream to design, construction, operation, maintenance and "demolition". The roadmap and work packages seem to focus on "automation" mostly in the design and construction. The work packages discuss quite a bit about the technologies and how they may affect or "revolutionize" the process of "capital project". What about human and social factors? Organizational changes? These factors may have more effects to the deployment of the technologies than the technologies themselves. As a consortium attempting to bring and encourage the use of new and emerging technologies to this rather "traditional" industry and practice, some studies on social factors could be useful.
•
As a researcher, practitioner, and educator in construction, I'm particularly excited to see and participate in the collaboration effort among the researchers, the A/E/C industry, technology firms, and government agencies. The roadmap and tactical plans did strike me as "realistic," "practical", yet "forward looking." It recognizes the barriers to success and shows a good understanding of current needs and challenges of the A/E/C industry. If implemented successfully, these plans will succeed.
•
The concept of developing a vision and overall framework for research, development, and implementation initiatives in information technology as it relates to the design and construction industry is very positive. My initial reaction to the framework is that it does appear to include a large number of important topics within the industry. The Roadmap mentions almost all areas of ongoing information technology research and development efforts to some level of detail.
•
My initial emotional reaction to the roadmap is that its broad focus is admirable, but it appears to assume that the industry and research community are starting from scratch. The concept of the seven year timelines seem to start without utilizing any framework and imply that it is realist to solve the issue in seven years. These timelines seem to contain some items that already exist in literature and they also outline a very methodical, linear process to achieving the goal(s) of each area. I do not feel that we,
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as a community, will be able to approach each of these topics in a straightforward, linear research and implementation process. We will need to continue to have focused research and implementation projects that address the core information technology research areas. It seems like the most important contributions that could evolve from the Roadmap concept is to develop common goals so improve the integration of ongoing and future research efforts and provide an avenue for better coordination and dissemination of the results. Common goals and an organization such as FIATECH can also be valuable to enable the creation of motivated teams from industry and academia to address these topic areas within a broader framework. I would like to see a research and development agenda created with industry and academic participation, which prioritizes agenda items. I would envision the agenda to clearly define research areas and research goals. A prioritization of the agenda items could be very valuable. One item that the Roadmap does not address well is priority. It lists quite a comprehensive list of issues with some defined priority inherent in the proposed seven-year plans. But it would be valuable to aim toward some consensus on the long-term priorities for making significant gains in information technology research in the industry. This list of priorities would vary based on industry members surveyed (e.g., large EPC organizations vs. building contractors vs. facility owners). The Roadmap also does not specifically address issues related to standard building or residential projects in the construction industry, which is the majority of the construction industry in the US. Some issues are shared with large capital projects, but the priority of items can vary significantly based on project type and sophistication of the facility owners. •
The idea of a roadmap and a direction for research is a good idea but we need to get it right. Too much hyperbole is damaging as we have seen in the past (e.g. Feigenbaum's claims for expert systems).
•
It is exciting to see the building of a consensus on the research and development needs of the industry elaborated by industry stakeholders, software developers, and academics.
•
Implementation issues are always needed. Understand technologies applicable to the construction industry and identifying construction processes are necessary.
•
The roadmap seems heavy on automation with little or no emphasis on the "people factor". Even though integration and automation will lead to the accomplishment of the overarching vision, the social and cultural aspects of the process cannot be ignored.
•
Engineers JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN!!!! There is too much use of the word "automation". If you automate the things that engineers like to do, they won't want to use the software. Designers like designing. We can only provide support for them in areas where they do not do a good job, where they do not like doing the work and where they can make more money. This third area is more illusive than meets the eye. I rarely promise this.
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•
Reading the material I felt that there were problems when the plan moved from the strategic to the tactical level. The tactical plan is trying to tell how solutions should be implemented. This creates several constraints when we are dealing with fast evolving technologies. It removes the creativity of developing solutions to what sometimes looks like simple implementation. It is easy to see that several different groups, sometimes doing an extremely focused effort, loosing the big picture, and duplicating efforts in different sessions, wrote the tactical plan. It is extremely difficult to envision how we are going to be able to integrate all the areas presented in the plan. The plan is too technological oriented and, in my understanding, will not be successful if it ignores the management and organization issues and it doesn't take into consideration the final client's needs that ultimately will be paying the bill.
•
A number of issues outlined in the Technology Roadmap have been the subjects of discussion for many years. As the introduction to the Automated Design Section makes clear there are a number of significant non-technical issues that make it difficult to address these issues. Unfortunately, these issues are not addressed in any detail in the rest of the document. The legal, financial and personnel issues must be addressed to enable the collaborative environment envisioned by FIATECH, but there is very little discussion of how to begin the process of addressing them.
•
Maybe my answer from the gut is the answer from the heart, overwhelming and some sense of how can all this possibly be accomplished?
•
Emotionally, I feel that the research elements of the plan must be tied closely to real world partners and problems for fear of developing systems that are only of academic interest. Before we solve the construction industry's problems, it is important that we perform research that fully identifies industry needs. That is, before developing a device that automates some construction activity, we should be sure that this is an activity where the industry perceives a problem. Additionally, I believe that we should be careful not to attempt to develop specialized construction applications where good solutions have already been developed and are commercially available. For example, the potential exists for many construction companies to inexpensively implement collaborative web-based systems like web logs and wikis to foster collaboration and knowledge management on construction projects. However, the barriers to implementation are that people in the construction industry are not aware of the latest techniques available that have been developed for other industries, and the culture of construction may serve as a barrier to field personnel in documenting their thoughts. Therefore, I think it is important that we draw on what is commercially available as much as possible, rather than the more costly route of developing new systems.
•
After a second thought, I became less excited about it because the initiative appeared to be similar to many other initiatives with similar, if not identical, broad and bright visions. I then ask myself what makes FIATECH significantly different, although I have no doubts that the initiative will achieve many of its objectives.
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Consolidated Results from Charrette Formal Input Sheets •
Bold initiative.
•
Something to hang issues and things onto.
•
Happy but apprehensive – will it maintain the necessary support across the board?
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Excitement, enthusiasm, opportunity, and fear.
•
21st century work force – new technologies, materials, and methods.
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Puzzled/torn.
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Too bad so few companies back this grand vision!
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Poor contractors, still trying to figure out yesterday’s technology.
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Why do we need to do this? Is this just another nice plan?
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Will this lead to any substance in terms of results?
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Nice effort from a lot of people.
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FIATECH aggressively pushes roadmap as industry roadmap but does not effectively strategize to involve others.
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Enthusiastic about this charrette.
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We have to play and make it happen.
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Deep insecurity.
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Just do it.
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Many things are going on, but the authors may not know what’s out there.
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Look at other industries.
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Where is the funding (to be developed in most of the elements)?
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How about human beings’ resistance in getting into a new arena?
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If we could improve the construction productivity in only seven years, why couldn’t we get better for the last thousand years?
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•
Can the construction industry be changed or at least be motivated to be changed when we have arrived at the destination?
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Hopes and dreams are very appealing.
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Best wishes – can I join (if there is something in it for me)?
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Not love, cordial. Sexy, but not inspiring lust.
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Roll my eyes – exasperation.
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Paternal/sibling/family pride.
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Jealousy.
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Plea for help.
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Warm and fuzzy.
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Cautious optimism.
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Love to hate it.
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Curious. Skepticism.
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Industry is too project-oriented.
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Puzzled, annoyed, enthusiastic.
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Exciting. Overwhelming. Cynical. Achievable.
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Anxiety and frustration.
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Human side is missing! Global context is missing!
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Not forward-looking in terms of what might be the needs and constraints for capital projects in the future.
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Inward-looking! Not client-oriented! Our market could change and we’d never even notice! This is one underlying assumption – that the market won’t shift much – what are others?
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How can we learn from other industries, e.g., the software industry? They are excellent at requirements analysis, for instance.
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Lack of references to previous work.
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•
Enthusiasm – potential!!! Have to help make it happen.
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Curiosity, good, excited, hope.
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Something the industry needs.
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Will need a lot of work.
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Will it work or fail?
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What about the labor?
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I want this to work.
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I want to work in a world where this works.
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Motivation and a sense of community working in unison.
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Surprise – better than expected! Hope!
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Excitement, then toned down – what’s new.
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Initial excitement, hope, and then concern – missed what and why and went straight to how.
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Helplessness and hope at the same time.
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Relief knowing that construction is not the only industry with problems.
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Excitement!
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The more I like, the more fear and concern – overwhelming!
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Big gap from the vision to the tactical. Something missing in between. Should define the problems and what and why and now how.
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Difficult for intellectuals to separate guts, hearts, and minds.
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Bold – good and bad. Big task! What’s involved?
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In need of next section to solve.
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Motivation – Sematech influenced by $300 million.
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Fear and suspicion; apprehension. Industry hasn’t partnered with other firms.
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Funding – devil is in the details, and we need lots of minds!
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•
A catalyst to get in bed with the industry, but cautiously optimistic.
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Not fully thought through.
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In need of massive manpower to resolve.
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Bunch of engineers that want to change the world. Not so interested in what they say, but what they can do.
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Great effort – concerns, frustration, opportunity.
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Curiosity.
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Upset about lack of reference to previous work.
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It’s a learning roadmap. There are a lot of parallel ideas. It does involve all major players.
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This is a no-brainer that has to work. The problem is that it’s too techie, and it’s not clear where the push is coming from. As a point of view you’re talking about the Semiconductor Industry roadmap in the 1980’s.
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What is really missing? What is different between this and other initiatives? It’s missing the what, the why, and the how.
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Desired pull from industry – what they think they want – going to need help getting there.
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Technology has come a long way. Others have the same problems I do.
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Surprise! The vision was much better than I expected.
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Hope that it can be taken forward and provide a reason for integration.
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Relief – some has the same problems!
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The more I like it, the more I fear failure.
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Understand methods and tools both in IT and CEM industries.
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International pressure (competition) – pusher.
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Too much US-oriented.
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EDI-> CALS -> XML ->? Where is our next step? Keep chaining – where are we now?
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•
What if drastic technology development comes, e.g., Samsung – fiber cables available in the market after design was completed?
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Emotional investment – we want this to work!
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Excitement/concerns/cynical/overwhelming/fear.
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Hope, excitement, confusion, skepticism, curiosity.
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Concern, frustration, could be opportunity.
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Applause for contributors.
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Not so interested in what they say, but what they do.
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After a second thought, I was less excited because there were many similar initiatives before with similar visions, so what’s the difference?
Consolidated Results from Charrette Facilitated Plenary Discussion •
The roadmap can be a catalyst for academics to get in bed with industry.
•
In its current form, the map can be puzzling to someone; on one hand, it can lead to an enthusiastic response because industry is there. On the other hand, it can leave people annoyed because of the lack of definition and specificity.
•
The roadmap triggers emotions of curiosity, excitement, and hope, followed by feelings of: is it needed? Will it work? Where is labor in all of this?
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The roadmap, after an initial reaction of excitement, generates frustration because it moves straight to the “how” before fully defining the “what” and “why”.
•
The roadmap leaves one with mixed feelings; a combination of enthusiasm with apprehension and suspicion, particularly because the roadmap does not really speak for the complete range of what the construction industry entails.
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The roadmap causes other feelings of frustration and anxiety by missing core ideas, such as the interactivity among all components. Substandard and sub-rated results may actually lead to more failure and make things much worse.
•
The roadmap leaves you with a feeling of “Just do it!” but at the same time, it raises question of “Prove it!” and “Show me the money!”
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This complex roadmap does not take into account the significant amount of contractors and subcontractors who are barely keeping up in dealing with old paradigms.
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•
From optimistic and excited, to confused and unfocused, to skeptical and curious about what’s going to happen.
•
People want it to work, and as a result, there’s excitement, but the fear of failure leads to concern and cynicism.
Reactions from the “Mind” Consolidated Results from Pre-charrette Formal Input Sheets •
The recent development of micro-scale science and technology has enabled researchers to make, manipulate, and probe objects at the level of a single atom. Researchers also discovered through this enhancement that these tiny atoms and clusters of atoms have completely different properties from those of the same material in bulk form in terms of electrical, magnetic, optical, and mechanical properties. The discovery of these unique properties has consequently generated a wide variety of innovations in new materials, devices, products, methods, sensors and equipment. The innovations are expected to impact all industries from advanced electronics to advanced medicine. They are given a common term as Nanotechnology in reference to manipulating and making the matter on the nanoscale. This refers to manipulating and making the matter atom by atom on a scale of one-billionth of a meter, a nanometer. Nanotechnology can be predicted to have an enormous potential impact on capital projects economically. Seemingly, the roadmap needs to anchor on its theoretical foundation and develop a concerted interdisciplinary approach to cope the new challenge ahead.
•
The Roadmap must be an evolving, dynamic, flexible plan. Currently the focus is applications oriented with a research orientation to be initiated based on the lessons learned from the use/misuse/gaps in the applications. The intellectual portion of this Roadmap will evolve from the transfer of data and information between elements and discover ways to utilize the data/information for the improvement of the efficiency of operations thru the lifecycle.
•
One of the goals of the research we are pursuing at Polytechnic is to identify practical and accessible solutions to the problems that are typically encountered on construction projects. The solutions may include information in a content and form that will enable an owner, designer or builder, or any manager involved in the construction process, to make better (more informed) decisions. Admittedly, these are very broad statements, and trying to channel limited resources toward achieving such a goal is a challenge itself. In an effort to try to focus on particular needs in the industry, the Roadmap overall seems to provide an excellent means to isolate specific areas that a broad spectrum of industry participants consider to be worthwhile for further development. When reading through the individual elements of the Roadmap, I am able to identify particular tasks that consistent with some of the areas that we have been exploring for further research and development. In that regard, the Roadmap identifies the
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individuals and organizations that have an interest and are working in those areas. By creating such a forum, there is an opportunity to better utilize my available resources. One such task that is of particular interest is E3-FA1-P Intelligent Project Analyst. This project's objective is itself broad and the specific activities are in need of further development, but it goes directly to the point of making individuals better managers. There are other tasks as well that are closely related to this particular task that we would explore. •
The intellectual dimension of the roadmap needs to be developed and technology development should be based on a solid theoretical rational. For example, conflict resolution between set of design knowledge needs some theoretical aspects to be developed prior to the development of the knowledge-base tools. There should be some emphasis on searching algorithms ' i.e. GA' to be used to assist in the design making process. More emphasis on VR as input/output interface for project data. A strategy needs to be developed to encourage small and medium companies to be involved in the roadmap, and in addition, their needs and expectations should be addressed and incorporated. The roadmap is currently 'pulled' by major contactors and developers and the role of academia is to make sure that bits do not 'hung' in the air and a sold research base should be developed.
•
The Roadmap presents a good framework for exploring the role of the designers and the design process within the medium term future.
•
As I read through the roadmap, I had several concerns: 1. The literature review style: the roadmap integrates the ideas and initiative that already exist in the industry and academic circles. I did not see much of out-of-thebox ideas. The roadmap is still focusing on product-oriented CAD-based systems, while other industries have learned to move toward more process-people orientation and towards knowledge-based systems. 2. The overwhelming engineering dimension: we need to integrate business processes into the roadmap. More importantly, we need to focus on knowledge management more than design-tools integration. I have no problem with working on integrating design tools, but I want that to be a step towards a knowledge-based framework where integrated CAD/Product modeling tools support effective and integrated systems. 3. Product Models vs. ontologies: it stems from that product models, as I see them, are just servants to support wise (knowledge-based) decision making, which is based on ontology. Other industries have managed to discover that and now are developing ontologies for modeling explicit knowledge (product model knowledge) and tacit knowledge (process, people knowledge). In short, construction research has suffered from the lack of formal theories about the interaction between its entities (we normally benchmarked manufacturing in this regard). I think the roadmap (and the caliber of stakeholders) makes a perfect opportunity to build or even hypothesize an initial theory for capital facility construction and engineering, i.e., what are our main entities, relationships, axioms,
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and meta data? Using the roadmap and all the research stemming from it to develop such theory will lead us into a discovery journey to define some of these items. Every other industry discovered that developing a flexible, easy to understand set of metadata or even an ontology is a must to assure interoperability (on business and engineering levels) and assure that research really moves in tandem. •
I have a few issues with the current division of the Roadmap into the 9 critical elements. The individual elements appear well thought out to me (although I cannot claim to be an expert in all or any of the fields) and collectively they seem to provide a comprehensive coverage of the critical areas. However, my first objection is that the decomposition as it stands is creating isolated focus areas with little or no mechanism for cross-category research/development. This seems to be slightly at odds with the greater vision of the Roadmap, that of a fully integrated system. At the same time, the division implies that we know what all the problem areas are and, indeed, know the basic solution approaches that should be adopted. I believe the division is necessary, but we should also build some flexibility into it. This flexibility should allow for the identification of new problem areas and solution approaches, and allow for future reclassification of the subject areas. It should be adaptable and permit creativity among problem solvers. It should not be so prescriptive. Finally, the term "automated" is used throughout the Roadmap description, as a solution goal. If the term "automation" were taken to mean a complete computerbased solution to a problem, then I would object to this as being impracticable both technologically and as an acceptable solution to society. Perhaps a clearer definition of this term should be included in the Acronyms and Key Terms section of the documentation.
•
The tactical plans are specifying solutions when they should be specifying the new business processes, needed functionality, data flows, and means by, which to evaluate improvements derived from achieving this vision. As they are now, the tactical plans are populated with a large number of disparate, heterogeneous project concepts that do not paint a clear and complete picture of what is really needed to deliver the overall vision. Some tactical plans do identify loci of functionality needed, while others spend more time specifying specific solutions to implement.
•
The levels of performance improvement proposed in the vision are worthy pursuits for R&D. However, to achieve the sorts of gains proposed requires a more fundamental rethink of how the industry is organized, and how projects are managed. It is hard to evaluate the theoretical foundation of the roadmap, as it has not been detailed. It seems that the roadmap retains many elements of the current paradigm for delivering projects. Nonetheless, if the roadmap is able to shift the industry to consider fundamentally different ways for delivering projects, it will have made a significant contribution.
•
The question here should be not be whether any of the elements of the road map are anchored in a solid theoretical foundation, but rather how well will these elements
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translate into practice, what impact they will have and what is the potential that the results will be accepted in the field. •
Yes, I believe that the road maps and the tactical plans are both anchored in a solid foundation. It is very important however, to maintain this momentum through the next very important stages of realizing the outlined vision i.e. clearly identifying and prioritizing projects and securing adequate resources for accomplishing the projects.
•
Intellectual reactions may come from different perspectives – academic (both education and research), industry, technology developers, and funding sources. Since, this workshop concerns about research agenda, the first question may be to what extents are these long-term knowledge-driven "science-based" research. Or, are the roadmap elements (work packages) dealt more with developments (something short terms that can better be done by companies or industry consortia) and “productizations” (something that need better marketing or demonstration of the ideas and tools)? I am sure there are many research topics with solid theoretical foundation that will probably come up. I am looking forward to learn more about these "fundamental" issues at the workshop.
•
Yes, I think the road maps and tactical plans are anchored in a solid foundation, but the next step is going to be the hardest part- to find sustainable funding sources to get the technologies off the ground. I see a lot of good ideas from the research community, owner's needs and challenges, technology consortia's desire to push their products, and government agencies' efforts to guide R/D efforts and technology transfer; however, participants are few from the contractor's side. I kept looking for AGC in the participant list, but was disappointed that they haven't signed on. There are a few large contractors on the participant list, but the current composition of the membership seems owner and researcher heavy. The membership composition somehow is very similar to CII's, with a few exceptions. I believe in order for FIATECH's plans to succeed, contractors and subcontractors need to play a key role, because they are the customers of these new technologies. It is very important to engage more contractors and subcontractors at this stage. Both AGC and ASA should be invited to provide input to the roadmap and tactical plans.
•
It is difficult to respond to this item since the roadmap documentation does not appear to focus on the theoretical background or the methodology or process used for developing the roadmap. The interactive process for developing the Roadmap with much input from industry can be very valuable. It would be interesting to perform a content analysis of the roadmap related to the current topics that academia and industry are currently researching. One theme that seems to reoccur through the roadmap document is the concept of fully automating planning and design. There have been studies that have shown that full automation of these processes is extremely difficult and can significantly reduce the potential for innovation. A better goal could be to have information technology support design and decision making instead of automating all processes. This goal would require better methods for visualizing information, facilitating collaboration and the potential automation of
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suggested scenarios that could improve innovation. These topics do not seem to receive much attention in the Roadmap. The Roadmap is organized around a multistructured approach with categories related to processes performed (e.g., planning, design, construction, operation) and then supporting or integrating items (e.g., information integration, new materials, technology enabled workforce, real time coordination and control). Therefore, many of the categories overlap with other categories, which may be appropriate but yield a challenging environment to develop straightforward approaches within the nine categories. There is underlying background research that would support the organization of the vision by process categories and integrating technologies, but these do not appear to be referenced or recognized. Also, there is a large amount of additional unmentioned background research, which is important to moving the research agendas forward. For example, in the lifecycle data integration section there is little discussion of the IFC efforts or the potential for leveraging from these significant ongoing research efforts, or at least a short discussion related to why it is not feasible to do so if that is the consensus of the Roadmap authors. In closing, I believe the Roadmap is an admirable effort and I applaud the authors and contributors for their significant contributions. I do believe it is valuable for our community to develop a research and development agenda that recognizes the current state of technology integration in our industry and outlines prioritized areas, which can provide the greatest long-term benefit toward improving the industry. The Roadmap can be a source for aiding in the organization of this agenda. •
Again I will focus on design. Current design procedures have developed to suit the cognitive limitations of the human brain. This developed to help us stay alive and reproduce. At the time that it was developed there was no such thing as design, so the fact the humans can do design at all is an accident of nature. One thing we can conclude is that the human brain is not an optimum design tool. Design as currently practiced goes through a number of stages. At each stage, material is "dumped" from the designers' brains into external memory - things such as paper, CAD drawings, design documents etc. In the Automated Design Roadmap the vision is for a compressed design process where most of these stages are missed out. This is entirely feasible and is almost achievable with current technology. I think the Roadmap is weak in terms of the actual technologies that can be used to achieve the vision (but the vision should not be automated design - it has to be human designers supported by advanced computing systems) The main techniques to achieve this will be stochastic search algorithms (e.g. genetic algorithms, genetic programming, particle swarm analysis, cellular automata etc). These are particularly good at searching large, multidimensional, multi-objective problem spaces and identifying good solutions. They have an additional advantage, in that they can also cope with constraints (usually modeled as penalty functions), so multi-disciplinary design teams to explore design spaces can use them. I think the Roadmap isn't strong enough in the area of stochastic search. Another feature that is missing is the power of virtual reality. There is a brief discussion of this but VR offers much more. Immersive VR costs are coming down quite quickly so it is now starting to become possible for moderate sized companies to buy this technology. So in the future, after concept generation using a stochastic
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search algorithm, the designers will look at the design in an immersive VR environment. They will be able to alter and amend the design in this environment why use CAD when you can have immersive VR. Also the VR will be linked to simulations so when the architect asks for that column to be removed the building will fall down!! Immersive VR will also be much better for the client. The only reason we use CAD and paper is that previously we didn't have the ability to represent things properly in 3D. Now we can why use anything else? Network speeds are going up faster than processor speeds so the potential for collaboration across networks is increasing. The Roadmap is weak in this area. Collaboration occurs at several levels. At the top level there is video conferencing, chat, shared whiteboards etc. At the next level there is document handling and storage and at the lowest level there is versioning / configuration management. All these technologies are needed and the lowest level needs further work to really meet the needs of designers. In the future, the computer systems that will be used by designers will be complex with massive functionality - maybe it will be a number of linked systems but the effect will be the same. Much functionality will only be used occasionally. It won't be feasible to train people to use all of the features of all of the systems so the user interfaces will somehow have to make the usage of the systems intuitive. I don't think this is possible with the desktop metaphor and pull down menus. We need new forms of user interface. At Cardiff, in collaboration with Loughborough, we have been exploring 3D virtual reality user interfaces as a possible solution. I'm not convinced we've found the answer but it's a possible route forward. •
Conceptual design is the stage when the most important decisions are taken. These decisions have the greatest impact on the final form, constructability, costs, and overall performance of the facility over the whole life cycle. Often, engineers get locked in sub-optimal solution space because of earlier decisions. Yet, there is still lack of computer support in this early stage. Element 2 of the tactical plan almost completely ignores this stage and focuses on detailed design.
•
Component technologies in IT and design/construction management should be equally covered.
•
The way the documents are currently structured they read more like a business plan. The elements provide a clear vision of what functions each will focus on and what their benefits will be. Also a chronological listing of suggested projects is provided. Perhaps this workshop will add a key dimension to these documents in that it will provide a core theoretical foundation for the elements and describe a linkage with fundamental research. A clear demarcation between research and product development also needs to be provided. The key strength of this effort is strong industry involvement and support. The challenge will be develop a plan to accomplish the overarching vision that provides output, both knowledge and products, in the interim.
•
We have to recognize that the most high value added tasks (e.g. design, planning, diagnosis, evaluation) are abductive and inductive in nature. Therefore they cannot be
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performed reliably using computing alone in an open world. Engineer-computer interaction facilities are essential to introduce information that is not modeled. Computers should provide choices not answers. We need to learn how to represent and explore solution spaces in many parameters. I didn't see this anywhere. These are core research threads that can be tested in many elements in many ways. Failure to recognize these aspects could compromise the success of almost all efforts. Engineers are professionals (they are not bank tellers). They are legally responsible for their decisions. They will only be supported in ways they choose to be supported. •
There is not theoretical foundation in the plan. It is a wish list from people that understands the industry needs but there is no validation process neither an understanding of the real impact and benefit of implementing the planed solutions.
•
The high-level of the discussion in Technology Roadmap makes it difficult to determine whether it has a solid theoretical foundation. The trend in the document seems to be that short-term issues such as developing position papers are addressed in detail but the sections devoted to long-term issues lack any detailed planning. In addition, the document quickly splinters from the overall vision of FIATECH into the individual areas. While each of the areas are important and offer opportunities for improved technology, little attention is focused on how these areas will be integrated to achieve the model presented in the vision
•
I think the roadmap is clearly anchored in a solid vision it is in expanding the vision I feel things may have got a little specific. It seems to me that the tactical plan assumes answers to certain research questions already exist or presupposes a path to solution. I feel many of the parts of the tactical plan need research for definition before embarking on particular projects. Too often in construction we assume we know the solution and the path to the solution and we neglect the basic research.
•
My intellectual reaction is that the roadmap is a complex undertaking that must be carefully coordinated. The roadmap actually addresses two very different areas: How can we improve the way construction is managed? and how can we improve the ways in, which construction is actually performed? Careful coordination by academia and industry will be important to insure that useful products are created.
•
After careful reading of the introduction and element 9, my concerns are: (1) Integration: much of the discussion in element 9 is built on the idea of sharing "standards", which has been doing by various other industry initiatives. Would this effort create another "island of automation"? In addition, we know that such an idea has been around for quite some time to tackle the integration problem. The fact that the problem statement of element 9 is so similar to those of studies in the past decades may hint to us that we need to give a second thought to this idea. Otherwise, it may be likely that we will come back again after 7 years and discuss the same problem. (2) Human-Machine Interaction: Although the initiative is technology-oriented, systems nowadays are not only measured and evaluated by their technical markups. Rather, often systems are perceived and then judged by their relationships with
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human-oriented activities. Such relationships to a certain degree determine the position of a technology initiative, and maybe the fate of the initiative as well. (3) Education: the role of education in the initiative is not clear. The point is simple the success of such an initiative depends on a well-educated/well-informed workforce. (4) The Complexity of the Problem: It is well understood that the complexity and the large-scale of the initiative make it difficult to clearly layout further details. However, it would be helpful if there were a mechanism to address the potential uncertainties involved. For example, with 9 elements focusing on different areas of capital project life cycle, it may likely result in new forms of "Islands of Automation", which in the end may compromise the goal of this initiative. Consolidated Results from Charrette Formal Input Sheets •
Need to evaluate and rethink the whole roadmap with the industry and academic involvement.
•
Need to deal with the “educated”, “intellectual”, “big corporation” (which is the roadmap really for?) and also “small”, typically “lower-educated” workforces! What and where are the research issues?
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What and how should we distinguish ourselves from IT professionals?
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Where is the education plan – from K-12 to college to PhD education?
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How to make it work?
•
The current roadmap might not be perfect, but it covers fundamental issues.
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FIATECH-NSF should try to find funding sources.
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Researchers should develop practical and well thought out research proposals.
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Companies should provide and collaborate with researchers to implement and experiment with new ideas.
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Industry should define business-driven needs and requirements and the rest should be left up to researchers and developers for finding innovative ways to meet the needs.
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FIATECH, instead of coming up with projects, perhaps should come up with “phases” to achieve this great vision.
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Similarly, it should define the metrics and provide a way (such as testing) to evaluate progress in the roadmap.
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The roadmap of execution should be conducted. Where would the finances come from? How will they be used?
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•
OK. I understand the roadmap is something we need to keep up with for the next seven years. The next step is to form teams who can actually bring tangible fruit to the construction industry – teams from industry, ok, and academia, why not?
•
We need to break the roadmap into identifiable pieces and actually get them assigned to responsible researchers.
•
To ultimately be successful, the roadmap needs to be: (1) client-oriented, not inwardlooking (although introspection will be necessary at the operational level to determine a starting point); (2) comprised of functional requirements, not a solutions wish list; (3) aware of the global context and how markets, requirements, resources, and constraints will change; and (4) developed with an eye toward lessons to be learned from other industries.
•
Missing metrics. Need to discover what happens in capital projects, invent new processes, assess whether inventions change the situation and improve it.
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Academic community can contribute at each step of research, prototype, implementation, and deployment. We contribute by being independent, bringing scientific tools and skills, and testing for reliability and validity.
•
Need to define what will be our role in this process. Clearly there are several issues that need to be addressed ranging from a lack of a business plan, consideration of social, cultural, and organizational issues, and filling the gaps in the current roadmap.
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The vision itself is business driven, while the plan is mostly technical, which means there might be critical pieces missing.
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The integrated solution is mostly built on the shared model approach, which may need a second thought based on our collective experience in the past decades.
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Not based on previous work, research, and development.
•
Will need more involvement from industry, government, practitioners (architects, engineers, etc.), owners, IT companies, and researchers for this to work.
•
It is ambitious and will not be realized in seven years. But much can be achieved if the funding is obtained and everyone is involved.
•
Roadmap should be refocused – get rid of 90% of the words and focus on vision and mission. Specific measurable objectives should be defined without specific technologies or precise step-by-step procedures.
•
Missing some emphasis on key elements: human factors, culture, etc.; Visualization and communication; and recognition of extensive previous efforts.
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•
I am concerned that at a basic level, there is a conflict about interoperability, which happens to be the cornerstone of FIATECH’s plan. Vendors want vertical interoperation but not horizontal, e.g., AutoCAD wants Primavera to read its design, Timberline to read its design, BUT not necessarily Microstation due to fear of loss of market share.
•
The focus of the plan is EPC industry. We need to broaden our perspective and identify issues that apply to the larger E&C industry and to look at all aspects that are required to ensure that our proposals are able to enact change in the industry. These would include technical, business, and societal issues. This would be a more complete and feasible roadmap.
•
There needs to be targeted implementation that helps show value of IT. The roadmap is too big to be pushed as a centralized vision. We need to have conditions where construction workers and managers are screaming for technology and won’t let it be taken away from them. Then the roadmap activities will be pulled.
•
This is a good starting point and we can, with work and time, redefine the roadmap in a way that will have an impact bridging industry and academia. I am optimistic that we can find an agenda to improve the A/E/C/IT industry.
•
The roadmap has great potential to define a process change.
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Need to think through the process and realize the document is to be a living document that will change, grow, morph over time as new discoveries/processes/materials are defined and discovered.
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This is the chance to utilize collective wisdom to provide the foundation for any “theory” of projects, or project management.
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Technology should be an implementer, not the ultimate goal.
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The vision can be developed to all companies to utilize the processes/theories at the level they desire.
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The usual linear process depiction of the roadmap is not helpful in representing a very messy, dynamic process. Probably some of the issues that exist in the development of the design, construction, and operation of built facilities have played out in the development of the roadmap. However, it is a starting point and can serve as a launch pad for furthering industry practices, reducing waste, and providing a structure for research.
•
How am I going to identify the aspects of this exercise that work best for my institution and will allow us to make a meaningful contribution to the overall effort?
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Need to think of how we are going to fund this initiative.
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•
Need to market this roadmap to the decision makers in big companies, government agencies, and country leaders (e.g., Congress, Governors, etc.).
•
Just a consolidation of what is already being done/literature reviews – putting together what’s already there.
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We need a bold, construction-based theory of how to do things.
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Integrate business process. It is a must.
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Develop a supply chain/implementation plan for the roadmap.
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What is it that FIATECH is NOT tackling? That includes relationships, constraints, best practices, capabilities, and the whole aspect of production-based systems.
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It’s a very technology-oriented view, and this leaves some stakeholders out, especially the social issues, business drivers.
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It avoids fundamental issues and seems like they really don’t know the full depth of what they’re getting into.
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Link between vision and tactics.
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Does it represent the whole industry or only the big players? Does it include mid-size or small, or the majority of the subcontractors and researchers?
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Need to bring the whole industry behind this.
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The problems are the same for many industries (some of these industries are the clients of the construction industry who are demanding better processes.
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Look outward as well as inward.
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Understand construction processes better. The roadmap focuses on construction management without much about understanding construction.
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Needed – we can do far more effective work if we are coordinated.
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Can we make this document our coordination mechanism? Not sure it has all the right elements.
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I feel confident – have been doing this for years, slowly, but it’s working.
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It is a time to produce “tangible deliverables (applicable solutions)” so that contractors/owners can use them.
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•
There is a need to ensure that the roadmap takes into account a number of nontechnology issues that will be fundamental to successful delivery. These include funding, enabling processes and integration of technological solutions into construction project delivery processes, human factors (including resistance to change), and the business case.
•
Human factors – roadmap needs to take into account human factors!
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A fully integrated and automated work environment for capital projects is realizable, but it is a question of time.
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The roadmap does not address the “human side” of delivering projects. For example, why do architects still prefer working with pencil and paper and not existing technologies? Not everything possible is deemed acceptable.
•
The overall vision is possible but it needs greater fine-grained definition.
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Decompose it down into specific challenges that can be realistically addressed from a research and development perspective.
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Needs more integration and adaptability to change. Need to identify the implementation process more clearly, including funding sources and disbursement short term, medium term, and long-term implementation strategies.
•
The real and challenging research questions must be identified. They are probably not about technology alone, nor about business processes alone, but in the interface between the two.
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My mind is telling me that this roadmap is worth a try and effort given the conditions that industry-driven initiatives pay attention to the contributions researchers can make, and initiatives account for what has been done/attempted before in order not to waste resources or fall into old pitfalls.
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Too broad and ambitious, but fine as a roadmap.
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How to make it work – collaboration – who/what/how?
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Avoid over-promise.
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Leave it as a roadmap/vision/guide, but leave implementation to individual researchers who could envision a practical strategy to bring research to specific products/services to target the actual customers of technologies.
•
Nanotechnology – theoretical foundations.
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Human factors.
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•
No theory of construction.
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Plan lacks in implementation, i.e., deployment, human factors.
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FIATECH and some other important industry organizations (IAI, OSCRE, CIRT) should work together to make it happen.
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Sounds like wish list that lacks knowledgeable filtering and coordination.
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Intellectual foundations and other efforts not well represented in documents.
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Assuming recycling and consolidation of ideas, then what is new?
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Is it research or development?
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Need more of a business plan.
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Assuming vision is solid, critique the tactical plan and reshape it.
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Increase theoretical foundation and stakeholder support.
Consolidated Results from Charrette Facilitated Plenary Discussion •
The reactions from the mind were not part of the facilitated discussion during the Charrette.
Additional Comments (Parking Lot) •
Answer to question of what can I do: I can build the best system for any given set of requirements, harmonizing the delicate balance of technology, organization, and business aspects. The only thing I need is your money.
•
Existing technologies have not matured yet. Technology maturation is driven by availability of proven and effective technological solutions and the widespread adoption of these technologies. FIATECH is attempting to address the effective technologies side of the equation. Where does the widespread adoption side of the equation feature in the roadmap?
•
Where does FIATECH see the delivery of capital projects in twenty years’ time?
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Only time will tell.
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The roadmap is one-dimensional in that it focuses on outcomes/products/objectives. It needs to include processes and relationships among people.
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Not just a map, but you need the vehicles.
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•
Do we know what FIATECH would like to do with the roadmap and how?
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Are we taking into account the necessary link to legislation and policy? An example is the support provided by FIATECH for the Enterprise Integration Act, approved by the House and the Senate, and signed by President Bush as Public Law 107-277 on November 5, 2002, which authorizes the National Institute of Standards and Technology to work with major manufacturing industries on an initiative of standards development and implementation for electronic enterprise integration.
•
Is the roadmap to be developed as a system of systems, or through a piecemeal approach?
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In implementing the roadmap, are we really changing the model of how we do business in the A/E/C industry?
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How can the roadmap incorporate existing frameworks such as de la Garza’s research model?
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The roadmap clearly has different levels, from strategic, to tactical, to operational, and this poses a challenge, given the interrelationships among all of these.
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The roadmap requires involvement from many disciplines, but how can you reach out to them?
•
In taking this roadmap to the next level, one should not forget other models of successful lobbying in Congress, such as transportation.
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APPENDIX 8 Strengths, Opportunities, and Challenges
Page A8–1
Strengths, Opportunities, and Challenges This appendix contains a synthesis of the principal strengths and opportunities of the F/CPTR identified by the participants in the charrette, and the full set of results as captured during the charrette. The material contained in this section was collected through Formal Input Sheets No. 2 submitted prior to the charrette and posted on the charrette web site, and also, submitted during the charrette. It also contains material collected through the facilitated breakout group discussions held during Session 5 of the charrette. These comments have not been edited beyond basic spelling, grammar, and formatting modifications, and reflect ideas as originally presented by the contributors for discussion in the charrette. Consequently, some redundancy was unavoidable.
Synthesis This section contains a synthesis of the principal strengths and opportunities of the F/CPTR identified by the participants in the charrette. An important starting point is that FIATECH, supported by NSF, is formally and explicitly seeking input from academics, in addition to the input it seeks from industry, in the development and revisions of the F/CPTR. FIATECH has provided an excellent opportunity for academia and industry to collaborate to bring this vision to reality. It will require research, development and deployment activities to be achieved and maintained. Strengths Within the discussion on the strengths of the roadmap, participants in the charrette believe that F/CPTR: •
Provides a broad, comprehensive, long-term vision for a fragmented industry. This vision will provide an opportunity to change the image of our industry and possibly provide the construction industry new appeal with a number of communities. For example, it may possibly make the industry more attractive to IT-savvy students.
•
Is impressive in that it is the result of involvement and consensus building of industry stakeholders, including large owner and contractor organizations.
•
Likely will be a catalyst for more research. The roadmap begins to identify the industry needs, it is solidly based on past academic research, is aligned with a good deal of current academic research, and is a vision upon, which academics can build and justify next generation research programs to address those areas in the roadmap yet to be defined and addressed.
•
Exhibits forward thinking.
•
Is generating enthusiasm and ambition among industry and academia. However, if it is not funded at the levels it requires to fully achieve its vision, this enthusiasm will quickly wane.
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Opportunities Within the discussion on opportunities for improvement of the roadmap, participants in the charrette believe that F/CPTR: •
Can be used as a starting point for renewed discussion with industry concerning their needs and the research needed to achieve those needs. However, the current roadmap in many places does not describe the functional needs as much as it might.
•
Is based on current facility delivery processes, but an opportunity exists to assess the efficacy of these current project delivery approaches and to realign them. For example, it might be possible to move construction more towards a modern manufacturing process.
•
Could be the catalyst for forming an academic community/forum through, which this roadmap and associated research activities can be developed and articulated.
•
Provides an opportunity to drive research funding towards a more coherent vision that could have a larger impact on industry. It will also provide an opportunity for greater involvement of multiple disciplines and sciences in the delivery of this vision.
•
Presents an impressive vision, but there is an opportunity to define metrics by, which success can be measured. For example, such a roadmap will need an extensive set of test-beds by, which to test and calibrate the benefits of various project delivery technologies and processes.
•
Provides an opportunity to truly understand the data flows within the industry and better support those flows of information with standardized data exchange protocols. The CPTR and international data exchange standards efforts have the opportunity to be better coordinated and take advantage of each other’s activities.
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Discusses a great deal about automated processes, but there is an opportunity to go beyond that more simple concept of complete automation to a level of intelligent support of the humans involved in the process.
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Provides an opportunity to bring the areas of supply chain and jobsite automation into the more traditional areas of integration and interoperability.
•
Represents a significant body of work, a contribution to the future of industry and a potentially significant driver of academic research. However, it must be recognized that this is a living document, that it will be continually evolving, and that it will require a significant amount of effort just to continue to maintain the vision and functional needs inventory.
Page A8–3
Consolidated Results from Pre-charrette Formal Input Sheets Strengths •
The main strengths are: (a) the formalization of a framework for research, development, and deployment of integrated and automated technologies on capital projects, (b) the identification of industry needs and priority areas based on a comprehensive analysis of technologies that can support the major phases of a project life cycle.
•
The strength of the Roadmap is that a vision has been laid out for a fragmented industry.
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The main strength of the Roadmap is a useful framework against, which technological developments affecting the capital projects can be evaluated
•
The consensus approach to the roadmap, which is designed to align people and activities by choice rather than imposing an agenda upon stakeholders. It remains to be seen whether the roadmap is open to refinement by stakeholders, but the ability to help shape the vision and "buy in" to the bigger agenda is important for having an industry wide impact. At least this possibility is open at this stage.
•
Broad & comprehensive plans, diverse participants, government agency involvement (e.g. NIST and NSF), and well defined thrust areas.
•
It makes the IT industry consider the construction industry as a future feasible market. Thus, the construction industry can use IT technology as a tool.
•
The main strengths are coverage of all important issues and a solid plan to include academics
Opportunities •
Some of the opportunities include: (a) the formalization of partnerships between construction owners, contractors, technology suppliers, and researchers, (b) participation in joint projects, (c) the development of research under realistic field conditions, (d) the possibility to incorporate some of the findings and lessons learned in related areas, such as infrastructure management, and (e) the identification of priority areas for funding by public and private agencies.
•
The opportunity is a very collaborative effort moving in the same direction, potentially on many fronts at the same time. This collaboration can be directed towards a clear goal thru a series of defined actions. Specifically with regard to the Intelligent Facility element, the opportunity to develop a methodology or database of projects that can show the return on investment for the sensors, programs, and savings could help provide the impetus to develop the intelligence to the desired end state. Integration of legacy systems with new systems or even developing programs that can Page A8–4
utilize existing data and/or information in new ways would enhance the intelligence that already exists but is unused. Further the opportunity for development of a new kind of workforce is inevitable. The implementation of technology is going to be key. Design teams, construction teams, maintenance organizations will all face the challenge of integrating the use of information and technology into the business unit to improve the bottom line. •
It presents an opportunity to develop complementary technological solutions for the delivery of the design aspect of capital projects.
•
Broadly, to achieve meaningful change in this industry. Strengthening the ties between industry and academics to improve the dialog between the two. For industry, to understand and appreciate the approaches taken by researchers to address fundamental problems. For academics, to understand how they can improve the meaningfulness of their research to improve industry. Reduce the lead-time between conducted research and industry implementation/benefits.
•
A breeding ground for ideas, R/D activities, technology development/standardization/transfer
•
It may lead virtual networks to formulate researchers and technical resources.
•
The opportunities are the benefits that that are listed in plan as well as improved education (real case studies, more experience, war stories, etc). Another benefit could be improved international collaboration.
Inhibitors/Enablers •
Inhibitors/Enablers: (a) Limited integration and coordination among the different elements of the roadmap, which will require a thorough analysis of the interfaces between the different elements to detect overlaps, omissions, and inconsistencies; (b) Incorporation, support, and integration of enterprise-wide issues on individual capital projects, and with enterprise-based technologies, given that the roadmap is focused on project life cycle issues; and (c) The definition of the roles to be played by the different parties involved, especially academics, including the differentiation between activities related to research, development, and deployment.
•
The key inhibitor that I perceive in the Roadmap is the technology competition that has driven the innovation to date. Companies sell their product based on the ability of the product to perform certain functions. Will companies be willing to "open" up their communications to allow a broader range of functionality with other providers? Need to develop an open protocol that will allow the various systems to easily transfer data between applications and utilize the data as needed by the stakeholder.
•
The Roadmap addresses very well the tangible aspects of the design activity. Whilst the tangible aspects provide opportunity for achieving a more structured, and hence potential greater economy, for the design function, the uptake of the developed Page A8–5
solutions would require several behavioral studies. The main enabler for achieving automated design is the available current technological capability •
Connecting the roadmap and its inherent propositions for improving the industry to achievable research objectives, and to core industry problems. Critical to the success of the roadmap will be defining how it can steer research, and how the research conducted in its name will help industry. I hope addressing these issues are in the objectives of this charrette.
•
The plan seems to be strong in technology development and weak on technology management and human-technology interface. After all, the success of a new or emerging technology relies on the interface between human and technologies. Sometime a new technology fails not because of the design but because of bad implementation. In a broader sense, the organizational dynamic (within a corporation or an industry) associated with new technologies also contributes to the fate of a technology.
•
Most contractors are relatively small or medium size companies due to the nature of fragmentation of construction projects. Paradigm shift of contractors (i.e., companies owners) is necessary.
•
The key inhibitor is the mistaken belief that all IT is the same as finite element work and other simulation software. The logical foundations of simulation are completely different from those of other engineering tasks and therefore they need to be treated differently. Please see my position paper Enablers are new methods that are emerging from universities and industrial/university collaborations
Obstacles/Obstacle-Removers •
Obstacles/Obstacle-Removers: (a) Risk issues and lack of commitment from higher management levels. This will require a deeper analysis of the broader impact of these technologies, such as value, return on investment, process improvement, and project performance, (b) Workforce issues. This will require consideration of humantechnology issues, as well as education and training regarding technology use and process changes, among others.
•
A major obstacle that I have encountered from end-users is the need to prove the Return on the investment for the intelligence being proposed. It is easier to understand from the construction company and/or design firm that can reduce costs and potentially provide an improved product to the building owner. However, the facility operations portion has a more difficult time providing the short term ROI that is often required. As mentioned in the Intelligent Facility element, initial first cost has been put in competition with long-term savings. Example, a major company currently indicates that if the capital expense does not have a 6-month ROI, it is not in the bidding list for funding.
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Obstacle remover is to develop test beds for implementation of various programs that will provide an independent identification of the risks, rewards of technology without the fear of failure. •
Not clear whether the roadmap, despite the consensus approach to its creation, addresses the core issues facing the industry - or addresses them in the right ways. Unclear how research in the various areas of the tactical plan will be integrated in and across the roadmap?
•
Obstacles: over-promised technology, next-bench syndrome, industry's reluctance to pay a premium for new technologies, risk averse attitude, waiting-for-competitors attitude, waiting-for-standards attitude, risks and uncertainties, difficult to quantify benefits, high costs, and conservatism. Obstacle Removers: industry wide test-bed with real user involvement in R/D activities, leveraged R/D investments, government seed funding, and industryeducation-research partnership
•
Construction IT market isn't mature enough to be stand strong. Measuring benefits from IT investment in the construction industry is necessary.
•
OBSTACLES: The necessary conservatism of the field, the low profit margins, risk adversity, lack of incentives, bad research, inadequate education, bad industrial trials. REMOVERS: this workshop, government involvement, better collaboration, better research, better teaching
Barriers/Barrier-Breakers •
Barriers/Barrier-Breakers: (a) Lack of a plan on how to manage and fund research projects. To date, no formal plan was formalized. The involvement of academics during the development of the roadmap and their participation in some of the initial studies was primarily based on voluntary work. This situation is not sustainable. FIATECH member companies should formalize a management and funding plan to support the development of the several projects proposed. (b) Generate excessive expectations. Technology is essentially a support tool. There is a risk to generate expectations and propose solutions that cannot be addressed by technology alone. The vision and the tactical plans should highlight pre-requisites and limitations.
•
Barriers would include the interoperability of the various approaches so that the data, information, and utilization of data can move seamlessly thru the life cycle. We need to have standards that can be accepted by all players in the industry. Maybe the ROI is a barrier as well. With a 6-month ROI requirement, most technology will be pushed aside without a second look.
•
If industry and researchers can be mobilized, and bought in to the roadmap, there should be no barriers, only obstacles to be overcome. True consensus building is needed to achieve buy in, and this may run the risk of having the roadmap reshaped.
Page A8–7
Failure to allow some reshaping would become a barrier. Also, the roadmap will need to be regularly reevaluated and possibly realigned in response to changing conditions and to learning achieved in the early tasks completed. •
Barriers: Lack of participation from potential customers, irrelevant research without real impacts (short and long terms), multiple standards and lack of interoperability, high costs, human attitude, fear of new technologies, and uncertainties. Barrier-Breakers: collaboration with industry associations, such as AGC, ASA, and trade unions; highly visible pilot projects with manageable scope to weed out problems before full-scale implementation; collaboration among researchers, educators, developers, and practitioners.
•
Implementation roadmaps and engineering/construction knowledge maps are demanding.
•
BARRIERS: Lack of money, lack of adequate knowledge BREAKERS - government programs, better teaching
Consolidated Results from Charrette Formal Input Sheets Strengths of the Vision and Tactical Plan for the Roadmap •
Takes a broad, comprehensive perspective across the industry, both in terms of the scope of the map as well as in the involvement of people in the development of the map (though biased by EPC).
•
Long-term vision.
•
Provides direction for industry/academe and can serve as the basis for coordinated research efforts.
•
Map is obtained through remote sensing (not too accurate), but ok for a start.
•
Does not show us how to get there (no vehicle or spacecraft).
•
Provides a clear overall vision.
•
Presents fresh perspectives in each area and across areas.
•
Provides a foundation for development.
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Provides a catalyst for research direction.
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Excellent industrial back up for civil engineering research.
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Gather industry support.
Page A8–8
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Overall vision.
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Extensive – covers all.
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Planning at strategic, tactical, and operational levels.
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Cross-pollination between academic and industrial research.
•
Comprehensive coverage.
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Platform to have fun.
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Pragmatic.
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Islands of research.
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Cross-pollination.
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Gives us a platform from, which we can move forward.
•
Construction isn’t sexy and has to compete with such things as nanotechnology, etc. for money. This unifying vision gives us a way of competing for funding.
•
We have islands of research – we are all doing research in our own little areas. This unifying vision helps us to join it all up and put our work in context.
•
It shows that industry has read our research.
•
Comprehensive overview.
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Industry involvement and commitment.
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Nurtures interaction between focus areas.
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Pulls us out of our focus areas to see the bigger picture.
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Engagement of academics.
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Synergies.
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Support for funding.
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Communication.
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Bridges islands of research.
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Industry-led initiative – customer needs already established.
Page A8–9
•
Encouraging (in this workshop/charrette) academic peer-to-peer collaboration.
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Helps push arguments with NSF and other potential funding sources.
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Strawman – something to react to.
•
Shows problem areas – areas needing attention.
•
Well-structured.
•
Comprehensive.
•
Reduces a gap between the academia and industry.
•
Inclusive in terms of research areas/arguments.
•
Industry involvement.
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Comprehensive coverage – all phases of capital projects.
•
Interdisciplinary.
•
Vision is clear.
•
Organized format.
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Starting point.
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Discusses items that we don’t typically discuss.
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NSF support for workshop.
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Request for academic input.
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Justification for our proposals.
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Weaknesses of current methods.
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Opens discussions.
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Enhances communication between industry and academics.
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Bridging islands of research/good context.
•
Can be built upon.
•
Provides solid argument for more funding.
Page A8–10
•
Brings two funding sources together (FIATECH + NSF).
•
The macro vision.
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Industrial involvement.
•
Homeland security in USA and the importance of the roadmap for critical infrastructure.
•
Globalization: companies that will master IT-based project development will gain an edge in their international marketing – brings more jobs in the US economy.
•
During the IT and manufacturing slump in the last four years, construction (the low tech industry) is the industry that helped the US economy!
•
New students are more IT-savvy.
•
Vendors are part of roadmap – short time between research and implementation.
•
The big players are involved in this. This will get the smaller fish to catch up based on a business need, not a belief in IT.
•
Coordinated research agenda.
•
Presents a coherent new, underdeveloped market for the IT industry.
•
Presents an industry vision to government and Congress: “we have a vision, so help us!”
•
Breadth of vision is impressive. Scope is wide-ranging, but impossible to be comprehensive.
•
Enthusiasm and ambition can lead to action. However, more piecemeal, under funded, faltering steps will not move forward.
•
Idea of intelligent materials is a strong notion for operations.
•
Based on grounded industry problem.
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Industrial engagement.
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Consistent.
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A concrete platform to go deeper/go higher.
•
Comprehensive, holistic, coordinated visionary approach to defining and suggesting solutions to a problem.
Page A8–11
•
Practical.
•
FIATECH has a clear vision as to what to be achieved. The roadmap to a certain extent identified major problems that the industry, as well as the academy, are facing and must be solved. In addition, FIATECH intends to build an alliance of implementers, researchers, funding agents, etc., which is critical to achieving its goals.
•
Unified vision, which is industry-driven and long term.
•
Clear identification of opportunities and benefits.
•
Comprehensiveness.
•
Industry-academia participation/collaboration.
•
NSF involvement – vision and research directions.
•
Consolidation of ideas, people, and organizations.
•
Scope for academic involvement.
•
Comprehensive vision of industry operations.
•
Provides a framework for research, development, and deployment of integrated and automated technologies.
•
List industry needs and priority areas related to technology.
•
Process used to develop the roadmap – it is amazing how much they could come up with, using mostly voluntary work.
•
Participation of a wide and diverse group.
•
Broad picture taking life cycle considerations into account.
•
Vision is well aligned with several existing available research efforts.
•
Large effort and time investment.
•
It is integrated and “complete” (including different phases of the project delivery process).
•
It is technology-driven (I will cite this as a limitation, too).
•
The overall roadmap is very ambitious and forward thinking.
Page A8–12
•
Breadth of vision – it is encompassing the whole industry.
•
The vision is clear and can easily be embraced.
•
It provides a rallying point to move forward.
•
The main strength of the roadmap is the holistic view of the delivery process/system and the description of the way different subsystems interact or depend on each other/involving all possible stakeholders.
•
The generality of the roadmap that can refer to all kinds of construction.
•
Industry relevance.
•
Broad scope of technology issues (elements).
•
Specific in descriptions of vision for elements and detailed plans.
•
Industry leads focus on issues that have been traditionally more research domain (indication of evolving technology life cycle?).
•
Have mustered fairly broad input and resources.
•
Have largely focused on the “right” issues (in my humble opinion).
•
Apparent alignment with some government initiatives, academic research interests, etc.
•
Is functionally more of an actual “roadmap” than some other efforts – gives sense of “landscape” of the issues, gives sense of how to get there…
•
Tries to address the overall process and the interaction of each element with the others.
•
Reaches out to anyone who could be involved or be affected by the outcome – owners, designers, builders, suppliers, etc.
•
The roadmap provides a good overall plan on the issues to be tackled in Elements 5 and 6. A number of projects have been proposed (but without details) that seem to be of significant value to the construction and facilities management operations.
•
Strong support by champion industry partners.
•
Academia, government (NIST), NSF, and industry working in unison.
Page A8–13
•
Provides opportunity to incorporate issues of later phases into earlier project phases (e.g., operations information into design) – concurrency/integration, better decision making.
•
Roadmap looks to provide a foundation for radical improvement in the way business is done.
•
Looking to integrate the operation of a facility into the overall facility/structure.
•
It provides an excellent opportunity for both academia and industry to interact and start a discussion. It is very beneficial to the academic world to start from industry needs and look at a documented industry perspective.
•
The roadmap as a mechanism of furthering the industry.
•
Concreteness of the plan of attack.
•
Some elements address easily identifiable missing links.
•
Bring research and industry together.
Opportunities Posed by the Vision and Tactical Plan for the Roadmap •
Opportunity to be used as a framework for coordinated research and pooled funding from industry.
•
Develop into an actionable research plan.
•
Good mechanism to connect the fundamental R&D issues to the needs of industry.
•
Kick start and structuring mechanism for a much needed discussion.
•
Kick-start a discussion to educate the industry.
•
Opportunities to unify the research and practical needs.
•
Opportunity to have one voice and align to get research and development funding.
•
To enhance the image of the construction industry.
•
Proof of concepts availability.
•
To have a way to bring ideas to reality.
•
Education.
•
New materials.
Page A8–14
•
Integrate total building life cycle issues into design and construction in order to improve building performance.
•
Redefines building performance – shift away from short term cost to life cycle cost.
•
Promotes realignment of project delivery approaches.
•
Change culture of the industry – be more collaborative.
•
Interdisciplinary research.
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Industry need-driven research agenda.
•
Collaboration opportunities.
•
There are many opportunities in elements 5 and 6 that need research (but need business/delivery models).
•
To have significant impact on the industry.
•
To form a comprehensive, wider outreach.
•
To foster collaboration.
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Improve linkages between technology and industry.
•
Improve awareness within industry.
•
Provides a common reference model for ongoing work.
•
Could particularly help with parts of the technology life cycle that are difficult for research community to address – development and uptake.
•
A chance to identify research issues – what new knowledge is required to implement the roadmap?
•
Opportunity to develop a real business case.
•
Create a forum/community for information exchange.
•
Industry and academia can rally around the vision.
•
It provides an integrated basis for industry/government support of research community.
Page A8–15
•
The vision provides an opportunity to develop a construction research community with participants from industry/academia/government community of equal players that can all provide useful input to move the industry forward.
•
Opportunity to address many information and process-related issues throughout the project delivery life cycle.
•
Opportunity to conglomerate all the participants toward a common goal (industry + researcher + funding agencies).
•
Opportunity to integrate researchers and practitioners, and also to understand and appreciate each other’s points of view.
•
Opportunity to make intelligent jobsite a reality.
•
Opportunity to make a significant impact and a quantum leap in our otherwise conservative and stagnant industry.
•
Changing the image of our industry – attracting more students to our discipline.
•
Building bridges – industry + academia.
•
Definition of a feasible research agenda. Drive research funding to a more coherent research that will have a bigger industry impact. Several small researches that will add to provide the bigger goal).
•
Help industry to understand research priorities and to understand that they could/should start funding research.
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Conduct research under realistic conditions.
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Collaboration with industry.
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Identification of research issues.
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Change image of the industry.
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Collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and government agencies.
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Bridge the gaps between research and practice.
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Technology into practice.
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Improvement of processes through new and enabling technologies.
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Justification of needs of technology in the industry.
Page A8–16
•
Help technology developers to better understand the A/E/C process and domain.
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Educate the industry about university research results and perspectives.
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Provide possible test bed for industrial testing of academic research.
•
Provides a link between vendors, research, and E&C construction industry.
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Bring academic research on this topic to the attention of the industry.
•
FIATECH provides a wealth of opportunities for academic research, implementation, and developing new industry-academic collaboration.
•
FIATECH also provides potential opportunities for validating many academic research studies.
•
Develop the business case for the roadmap (ROI).
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Educational/technology transfer process development.
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Human factors impact analysis of the roadmap.
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Metrics to define success.
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Getting attention from the construction industry.
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Broad roadmap (NSF) to mini-roadmap (industry roadmap, academic roadmap).
•
Ask IT/CEM people to come to us.
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International project management.
•
Construction IT industry – a feasible market now.
•
SAP, Baan – want to penetrate the construction industry (solicit their interest).
•
Bring industry people (technology providers).
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Industry funded research.
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Provides voice to existing and completed research.
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Collaboration between industry and academia – closing the loop, improving industry understanding of what research can offer.
•
Scope to move industry forward.
Page A8–17
•
Focused, concentrated research effort is possible.
•
Willingness on the part of industry to rethink/redefine their operations.
•
Dire need to attack civil infrastructure morals.
•
Schools are a huge resource to industry in talented, intelligent, technology-savvy intellectual capital. Can balance the staff-up, staff-down situation in industry.
•
Industry is an enormous data source. What are real data flows, activities?
•
Need to understand methods, not just products.
•
Lack of theory underlines an opportunity.
•
Leap to solutions. Opportunity is to present alternatives. Pet projects are more of the same.
•
Getting the big players sold on the roadmap means that the smaller fish will eventually catch up.
•
Present the industry vision to Congress and funding agencies in a better way – “we have a vision, so help us!”
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Semi-coordinated research agenda.
•
IT industry will be able to see the potential in our industry as a market.
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Get industry funding.
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Get more federal funding.
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Identify collaborative opportunities – including international ones.
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Redefine the process – extend limits of humans – better products/faster/cheaper.
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Prioritize goals.
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Reduce waste in industry.
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Make a “backward image” of industry into a “sexy image” and attract next generation of workforce.
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Move from functional delivery to restructured process.
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Benchmark capital delivery with other sectors.
Page A8–18
•
Lead to step change.
•
Used in education of students.
•
Due to industry involvement, could have a big impact on industry.
•
Could have industry/academic groups focused on areas.
•
Unify communities to enhance communication and understanding – high value added to NSF/funding sources.
•
Value proposition/business model.
•
Reduce finger pointing by reducing understanding gap.
•
Provides goals and benchmarks.
•
Gives a better chance of successful projects.
•
Provides a good organizational structure.
•
Way of eliminating waste in A/E/C industry, worth billions of dollars.
•
Could lead to step change.
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Possibility of doing research with broader impact – could have direct relevance to the A/E/C industry.
•
Opportunity for international research – various communities brought together.
•
Enhanced value to NSF – value proposition.
•
Way of attracting new people to industry.
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Case studies/benchmarks.
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Better education.
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Improve the industry significantly.
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Do relevant significant research.
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Unifies research efforts.
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Improve the image of our industry.
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Improve relationships between industry and academia.
Page A8–19
•
•
A chance to redefine, redesign the whole construction process from planning to delivery to take account of new technologies. These will enable us to concatenate the whole process so that we can deliver better products, faster.
•
We are often compared unfavorably with manufacturing – this is unfair. We solve hard problems, despite products that are built in situ. The complexity of what we design and build is substantially greater than, say, a car. We should start pointing this out.
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Redefine construction as a manufacturing process.
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Benchmarking construction against other sectors.
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Research opportunity.
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Enable industry and academe to interact.
•
Rethink business processes.
•
To go somewhere, need a common goal!
•
Help industry catch up on IT.
•
Potential to involve multiple disciplines and sciences – will force/pull research communities together.
•
Will unify research effort through improved communication and better global understanding – excellent value for money.
•
Added long term value to NSF in terms of promoting multi-disciplinary research.
•
Can redefine/re-engineer the way we do engineering.
• Will provide extensive case studies. Will contribute to education. Strengths and Opportunities Associated with F/CPTR Elements 1 and 2 Planning and Design Phases of a Capital Project Strengths •
Promote integrated design (focus on system) and collaborative design (focus on people).
•
Force design professionals to see other disciplines and discuss items that we don’t typically discuss.
Page A8–20
•
Support most important decisions.
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Focus on simulation and modeling.
•
Reduce mundane design tasks and reduces cost.
•
Enables collaborative design (Whole Building Design Guide).
•
Recognizes the projects are not isolated activities.
•
Leverage/extend limits of human decision-making.
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Automated design – must get rid of “automated”.
•
Recognized human interaction/interfaces.
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Empowerment of stakeholders.
•
See the future.
•
Inclusive sections in roadmap.
•
Entire life cycle impact/sustainability.
•
Discusses problems and barriers as well as vision.
•
Greater client satisfaction/input from non-technical users.
•
Explores alternatives.
•
Encourages (though not explicitly) collaborative design, i.e., close communication between designers and clients.
•
Better design that bring greater client satisfaction.
•
Nurtures interdisciplinary respect.
•
Attempt at providing comprehensive model of design and planning process.
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Visualization component.
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Integration of disciplines, learning from each other’s expertise, and respecting each other’s expertise.
•
Rethink the way we do design.
Page A8–21
•
It includes modeling and simulation in planning, which will lead to greater client satisfaction and better design.
•
Recognizes wider social aspects of schemes.
•
Should lead to greater client satisfaction and help to better address business needs.
•
Recognition that projects transcends the delivery phase.
•
Potential for speeding up design decision-making.
•
Awareness of the end game from the beginning.
•
Bring modeling and visualization in planning.
•
Communicate to client what project is.
•
Consider life cycle cost and impact in design and planning.
•
Will allow more alternatives to be explored, thus resulting in better designs.
Opportunities •
Develop technologies to address designs/enhance conceptual designs/extended limits of designs.
•
Opportunity to rethink about planning and design.
•
Develop flexible systems to support design.
•
Give a chance to educate designers.
•
Determine information we will have throughout the process afterward.
•
Opportunity to think about interfaces and affordances for design systems.
•
Capability to rapidly play “what if?” at any stage and update accordingly – user judgment included.
•
Developing knowledge base.
•
Flexible design systems – systems that can be used in many different ways – the user finds the way in, which to use the system that best suits them.
•
Flexibility.
•
Educating designers.
Page A8–22
•
Creative use of technology.
•
Redefine design roles.
•
Hard technologies.
•
The advanced tools we will provide will show designers the complexity and size of their search spaces.
•
The systems will enable multi-disciplinary reasoning, which will lead to economic and better solutions.
•
We will have virtual prototypes, which can be more easily visualized, getting us away from “paper based” thinking.
•
A chance to re-engineer the process.
•
Opportunity to rethink the way we design and plan. Stuck in a system that evolved over last 100 years, not necessarily best for achieving goals and exploiting new technologies.
•
Educate designers on impacts of their decisions.
•
Develop hard technologies to aid design.
•
Develop flexible systems for support of planning and design.
•
Enables creative use of technology.
•
Opportunity to educate designers on enhanced choices.
•
Strengthen interfaces – software/hardware and people.
•
Move to full-scale demonstration projects with practical systems.
•
Develop flexible systems/use in diverse ways (creative use).
•
Tools for virtual prototyping and playing with different plans and designs.
•
Enables creative technologies.
•
Educate designers on range of solutions – “don’t know what they don’t know”.
•
Remove barriers to technologies.
•
User interface focus/needs of designers/flexible systems.
Page A8–23
•
Rethink design and planning.
•
Define various levels of information – too much data, not enough information.
Strengths and Opportunities Associated with F/CPTR Elements 3 and 4 Procurement and Construction Phases of a Capital Project Strengths •
Bring technology to the job site/work force.
•
Integrate technology and processes.
•
Proactive decision-making.
•
Makes supply and construction better organized.
•
Construction vision is forward thinking.
•
Real time information exchange is about squeezing lag time or “information float” out of operations. The supply chain management area is an excellent example to demonstrate the benefits of “automated” operations.
•
Experience exists from other areas: semiconductors, automobile, aerospace – there’s an opportunity to transfer technology.
•
Can bring supply chain and jobsite perspective into traditional integration/interoperability body of work (CAD dominated).
•
Can lead to analogy to use of virtual buildings in the design process.
•
The integration and modeling of site processes and supply chain can lead to new paradigm in production engineering.
•
Make owners, designers, and users aware of construction issues.
•
Improve communications.
Opportunities •
Lower construction cost with better supply and construction processes.
•
Allow better planning and control.
Strengths and Opportunities Associated with F/CPTR Element 5 Operations Phase of a Capital Project Strengths Page A8–24
•
Data integration is a MUST for this – this is a great opportunity for R&D in data integration!
•
Recognition of the need for life cycle integration.
•
Data management and security will be highlighted.
•
Virtual enterprise survives on data integration.
•
Having vendors and owners be part of the roadmap means a short time between my research and their development.
•
Opportunity to present IT-based solutions to smaller contractors as a business advantage, not as a fancy thing.
•
I can see where my research fits.
•
Opportunity for collaboration with IT industry.
•
May be more funding opportunities.
•
A lot of good ideas.
•
Broad and comprehensive.
Opportunities •
A lot of new technologies are now available.
•
Potential to save big $.
•
Tactical plan overly ambitious for time frame and scope.
•
Lack of common product models, data models, and work flow models.
•
Secure data sharing – CORBA, STED?
•
Back-up systems.
•
Common dictionary.
•
Opportunity to develop data/information integration standards to enhance interoperability throughout the project life cycle.
•
Ability to explore life cycle issues leading to better quality facilities, sustainable construction, etc.
Page A8–25
Inhibitors/Enablers Inhibitor Focus on technology while losing track of other challenges: • Process/product • “Production” of projects • Organizations/relationships • Contracts Conservatism of industry – don’t want to be first to take the risk. Too techie. Organization/social/human factors. Limited industry participation by champions. Lack of detail. Focus on technology.
Enabler Don’t automate, obliterate (Hammer 1990), i.e., not all automation is good. FIATECH report doesn’t include metrics to begin to assess what is good/bad. This depends on business processes in, which technology is used. Case studies and demonstrations. Human factors. Training and education (even that will be a slow process). Need broader representation.
More detailed execution plan. Managing process while delivering product. Need data to identify problems and validate Company pledges and contributions (inconcept. kind). Need to include human factors and Cost benefit analysis. business perspectives. Need to think if the realistic problems of the industry (e.g., standardization, bidding systems, adverse relations, trade organizations, etc.). Labor. We have a vision that could provide jobs overseas and new economy. Help us by educating our labor. Size of IT gap. Just start! Admit that the roadmap is partial and we need to create a network of complementary roadmaps in infrastructure, process management, labor management, etc. The dinosaur’s inertia. Get broad buy-in at executive level. Underestimation of the endemic problems Education the industry through joint of integration in the A/E/C industry. workshops and projects. Not well embedded in a broader discussion. Data availability from users. Ensuring confidentiality and generalizability of data.
Page A8–26
Inhibitor How far down can technology be implemented? E.g., subcontractors. At what point does it actually cost more to implement cost/benefit? Resistance to change. Capability of contractors/subcontractors. Uniform implementation. Competitive advantage/commercial. Most of the proposed elements are relevant for an integrated systems approach to construction. Actual practice is strongly motivated by modularization, reducing interfaces. The proposed vision is not aligned with industry motivation until there is a more fundamental paradigm change. The supplier structure fragmented with many small “guys” that are difficult to include in an automated supply chain. Automated procurement requires trust. Since supply chains in construction are configured for each new project, it is difficult to establish such trust (except between some large partners). Trust, involvement of total industry, lack of funding. Failures of early trials of the technology.
Funding. Money. Proprietary information vs. impacts. Consideration of organizational issues. Unwillingness to share data, cases, and other “reflective” resources. Resistance to implementation. Communication between industry and academe, industry and industry. Language problems.
Enabler
Can be overcome by identifying and working with a first “tier” of suppliers.
Funding from government and industry. Developing a research mind set and collaboration with researchers. First projects should be carefully selected. Moving from individual perspectives to the holistic view. Definition of the roles to be played by major participants. Clearinghouse, benchmarking, alliances. IT companies, designers, and contractors. Necessary to establish a sustainable communication structure and capabilities before establishing research programs – eScience systems?
Page A8–27
Inhibitor Cultural/social factors – how to overcome resistance from the industry? Motivations for the industry and academia. Funding sources/amount. Practicality of delivered projects. Public relations/publications. Orthodoxy of the professional disciplines in the implementation of the roadmap (power politics). The industry is technology averse. NSF will fund fundamental research. There is then a huge cost moving from research demonstration to commercial tools. Who will fund this work? Prejudice in the way we do things. Lack of money and too many people chasing it! Mistaken belief that IT = FE programs. Link between big needs and needs of design/construction professionals. Industry culture. Resistance to change. Funding. Government participation. Long-term commitment/sustainability. Patchy implementation. Existing contractual arrangements. Fragmentation. Low profit margins/lowest bidding for public. Short-term perspective. Industry funding. Lack of measurement. The result of the implementation may require a new breed of workforce that can use the technology to its full extent.
Enabler
Engagement of the different professional disciplines through industry workshops to develop common perspectives of the roadmap implementation. We have to have test cases. We need to work with software companies to bring them on board.
Education. Industry digs into their pockets. Better education and new methods. Commitment of resources from someone in companies that has “big vision”. Education and training. NSF/FIATECH. Top-level lobbying.
Government to improve adoption and some integration approaches/technologies. Commitment of top executives in decision to implement – move forward. Industry, faculty, government buy-in. Documentation.
Page A8–28
Inhibitor Confidence in new technologies; overpromises and high expectations. Fragmentation of industry.
Enabler Government seed funding, partnership among industry and academia. Government seed funding, partnership among industry and academia. Government seed funding, partnership among industry and academia.
Lack of funding. Assumptions from large EPC firms. Competition among participants to share information. People don’t want to change.
What’s in it for them in each specific field?
Obstacles/Obstacle Removers Obstacle Map is a good starting point, but as we go along and discover more, map will change. Data collected in various delivery phases may be different from data collected explicitly for organizational learning. Profit margin – business advantage/disadvantage and risk. All for big companies. Lack of clear definition and understanding. Industry must let go of data. Better measures of success. Research and development budgets within each big company. EPC domination. Limited understanding of the objectives. First cost mentality. Maintenance mentality – this is the way we do things; don’t want to use people. Lack of skilled personnel. Legal barriers.
Obstacle Remover Don’t let it get static, keep it current with regular updates!
Need to incorporate economic/business decision-making processes (business delivery models). Technology transfer to subs and contractors. Cultural change; promote collaborative thinking. Pool funds from the industry to support R&D issues. Broaden to other sectors. Clearer, explicit objectives. Show the proof of concept or show the money. Elevate the work force. Next generation personnel.
Page A8–29
Obstacle Security issues.
Costs.
Lack of standards of different kinds. Not enough focus on site construction process – too much management if we understand the current. Needs buy-in at all levels (from managers to the site field level workers) and all participants in the supply chain. Who is going to pay for the technology? Money. Losing the idea of competitive advantage. Stop looking into how. Validation process and metrics. Real test sites with changing the way things are done with dangerous implications. Risk issues. Analysis of broader impacts: ROI, process, life cycle. Who will pay? Lack of money for research. Difficult for researchers to keep commitment long enough to get traction. Word “automation” can be a bad word. Mobility of key players – in-kind support suffers when organizations restructure, employees move, people retire.
Obstacle Remover Supply chain information sharing requires a peer-to-peer computing philosophy. How do you protect your own critical and competitive data? Need a technical solution. Demonstrate benefits in monetary terms (time reduction, waste reduction, risks, etc.) Revitalization of B2B. Linkages between supply chain and site production. Understanding what information is required by each player.
Look into what and why.
Commitment of higher-level management.
Pool funds from industry. CIFE model? CII model? Must revise wording to improve perception as an enabling technology. Efficient, pre-defined back-up systems that ensure continuous development of the knowledge base. Secondary and tertiary actions to cover loss of primary industry champions.
The cost to adopt a new technology for an organization that achieves thin profit margins.
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Obstacle Inadequate definition to enable the integration of the different phases of the roadmap. Governments don’t see the construction industry as being worth funding. This will require multi-disciplinary research, which can damage individual research careers. Faculty need to develop their own fields of expertise/areas of recognition. Conservatism, low profit margins, risk aversion, lack of incentives, bad research, inadequate education, bad industrial trials. Lack of industry integration or integration of big units within companies. People – labor and professional staff are not IT-savvy. Lack of appropriate interoperability standards. Inadequate linkage between integration and project delivery processes. Lack of knowledge of past efforts. Lots of disjointed projects/lack of integration. IT spending in CEM is 0.5 – 1.5% Industry attitude causes less funding opportunities. There seems to be a missing link between the vision and the implementation plan. The vision includes many business drivers but the implementation plan is mostly technical. Lack of customer involvement for technologies. Conservatism of the industry. Reality vs. research assumptions. Money.
Obstacle Remover Provide more definition.
We need to talk to government with a single voice – the roadmap will do this. We have to convince faculty that multidisciplinary is good. Collaborative research. This workshop, better collaboration, better research, better teaching. Research that shows values of integration, ways of reducing waste, etc. Use government programs to start good training programs. Focus on interactive, user-friendly systems.
Involve researchers.
Interested in solutions (easy to operate and maintain). The missing piece is the relationship between technology proposed and business focuses to be achieved.
Successful pilot projects/programs. Partnerships (research, government, industry). Successful pilot projects/programs.
Page A8–31
Barriers/Barrier Breakers Barrier Lack of appropriate performance metrics.
Proven cost-benefit of technologies. Technology scouting from members. Mismatch of proposed processes. Diverse processes that change. Element 9 is mostly based on the idea of the shared model approach/standards. The fact that today we are still discussing this issue may suggest to us that we need to have second thoughts on this idea, which may have its limitations (identified) and application context. The lack of understanding towards the appropriateness of using a certain technology. ROI – what is the business case for this? Who are the real champions for change and do they have they power to enact it? Who will pay for this? Lack of complete understanding of processes involved. Lack of ROI models. Lack of industry funding and cooperation. IT solution looking for a problem, or vice versa? Lack of complete understanding of CEM processes. Funding – who will fund this? The current project delivery system that forces companies to focus on the bottom line. Implementation road map! Conservative mindset of people in the A/E/C industry.
Barrier Breaker Develop process and output metrics (other/beyond the traditional schedule/budget performance) specifically to measure/evaluate process of implementation, e.g., SCOR metrics (Supply Chain Council). Proven cases. Collaboration. Standardization.
Focus groups, internships, case studies.
Need models of current processes and future processes. NSF to fund research. Owners to fund sample projects based on the roadmap. Establish a vendor competition to illustrate the use of the roadmap in a parallel track to an ongoing project. More education, more customer-based user-friendly technology.
Page A8–32
Barrier Contract structures. We are using some wrong words in the roadmap.
There are some big software companies involved – Intergraph, Bentley, etc. They will want to develop big, stand-alone systems. No linkages drawn to other areas of construction not emphasizing the EPC model of project delivery. Organizational barriers will make it hard to re-engineer the industry or whole process. Insular thinking. Funding is needed. Organized focused community is not present. Fear of loss of market share leads to refusal to cooperate. Waterfall model of life cycle. Contracts that enforce waterfall professions. Lack of a research management and funding plan. Non-IT issues – technology is just a tool! Excessive expectations. Money. Automation requires new type of relationships between contractor and suppliers. Sometimes there are legal restrictions: open bidding on public work. Up front cost to install new technology. Inflexibility and vested interests. Poor measures of success.
Barrier Breaker Risk analysis and reduction of risk in contracts. Automated design – this will lead to incorrect expectations of what will be delivered. We need to get the terminology correct! We need interoperability so people can customize what they use to suit their needs.
Establish how the roadmap can be translated to all the areas of construction not procured through EPC.
Awareness. FIATECH gets money, e.g., NSF/NIST funding. Develop industry/academic organization for focusing on this area. Reduce risk? Endowment for industry-wide innovative initiatives. Educate to a better supply model. Full service model.
Show the savings – hard to capture avoidance costs. Incentives (government). Explicit measures of success along the way.
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Barrier Barrier Breaker Current paradigms of performance and how Change management research – to execute projects. sociological research, e.g., benchmarking research. A sustainable funding model is needed. Hinges from data flow. Culture changes.
Consolidated Results from Charrette Facilitated Breakout Group Discussions Breakout Group No. 1: Focused on the Planning and Design Phases of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 1 and 2) General Strengths •
The roadmap provides comprehensive coverage of all phases of capital projects, all the way down to sub-level tasks. In doing so, it exposes weaknesses currently present in the current approach.
•
The roadmap offers and opportunity to coalesce, unify, and serve as a catalyst among a wide range of stakeholders. It also opens the door for communication beyond our respective disciplines.
•
Industry involvement in the roadmap, combined with the high number of volunteers, creates an atmosphere of excitement about the possibilities.
•
The roadmap provides a well-structured set of problems that can be seen as an inventory of many things still to be done.
•
It’s a good start and a platform from, which we can move forward.
•
The roadmap addr4esses the strategic, tactical, and operational levels, thus increasing its value.
•
By having NSF express an interest in the roadmap, new opportunities for collaboration open, particularly peer to peer within the academic community, and also between industry and academia. Similarly, striving to engage academics in an industry effort of this magnitude is unique and offers a fresh perspective.
•
The pragmatic nature of the roadmap enhances the opportunity for acceptance and provides an opportunity to also enhance communication between industry and academia.
Page A8–34
•
The fact that two very different entities liked FIATECH and NSF have converged on the roadmap suggests the possibility that other entities could be interested in supporting the effort.
•
The roadmap addresses the issues of islands of automation, which, within the academic community, also has a parallel in the islands of research. The roadmap strives to eliminate these islands and promote a more cohesive whole.
•
The roadmap offers an opportunity to cross-pollinate and cross-influence among a wide ranges of disciplines.
•
The roadmap is a straw man – you can like it or not, but you can still build on it.
•
We need to work hard for the money in academia in our construction domain, because what we do is not sexy compared to other science and engineering disciplines, and the roadmap may provide new mechanisms to increase our visibility.
General Opportunities •
The roadmap can help redefine the whole process of capital delivery through the use of technology and yet its focus on technology cannot lose sight of the fact that humans must be kept in the loop.
•
By having all the elements, the roadmap can concatenate value, quality, effectiveness, efficiency, improvement, and other desirable outcomes.
•
It is possible to use the roadmap as a common goal to a wide range of stakeholders, thus creating a critical mass.
•
The roadmap has a clear focus on eliminating waste from the process. In its complete vision and at the core of the roadmap, a clear desire to eliminate waste, expedite the process, and eliminate current efficiencies from the life cycle of facilities is inherent.
•
The document of the roadmap lists an extensive set of documents, which could be made stronger through the development of case studies.
•
The roadmap offers a common ground for international collaboration.
•
The roadmap offers a vision of processes-oriented delivery and use of capital projects that can be streamlined like other industries have been able to do, such as aerospace.
•
Through the roadmap, we should be able to benchmark what we do in the A/E/C industry, and at the same time with other sectors, which can lead to step change improvement.
•
The research that can spawn from the roadmap can have significant impact not only in terms of advancing knowledge, but also broader impact to industry and society. Page A8–35
•
The complexity of the roadmap requires the involvement of multiple stakeholders, which can lead to better communication and understanding among all, unify research efforts, and add value to the missions of both NSF and FIATECH, particularly NSF since they have made a commitment to bring this diverse group of academics together.
•
The roadmap can be used to turn the industry from drab to sexy, attracting a new pool of people to the professional workforce.
•
The roadmap can be used for education of students along the complete pipeline.
•
The A/E/C industry tends to accuse academics of doing impractical research, while academia blames industry for not doing enough research and for excessive fragmentation. The roadmap offers an opportunity to overcome both, thus reducing the gap of understanding between them.
•
The organizational structure to segment the processes involved in all facets of the map are conducive to organizing task groups to collaborate on very specific and pointed issues.
Specific Strengths of F/CPTR Elements #1 and #2 •
Modeling and simulation enhance the ability of planners and designers to communicate to the client all aspects of the project in the early phases and help the client clarify the set of wishes, wants, and needs.
•
The roadmap pushes toward enabling collaborative design from a people perspective, and it also pushes toward integrative design from a technological system perspective.
•
The roadmap recognizes that capital projects are not isolated activities, but rather respond to larger issues such as the economy and the business proposition of the client organization.
•
The strength of automated design is the speed and efficiency by, which designs can be generated, with a special emphasis in identifying and defining decision variables early. However, the term “automated design” is a poor choice of words because it limits the true scope of what this element can be.
•
The roadmap elements help identify the current situation and go beyond “what if” scenarios and the explicit incorporation of tacit knowledge.
•
The map element 1 recognizes the need for human interaction, but this doesn’t come through as clearly in element 2.
•
The focus of the roadmap is on the enabling role of technology as a complement/supplement to human interaction and the application of tacit knowledge.
Page A8–36
•
Technology can change mindsets and the roadmap can be used to make choices, not just to provide answers.
•
The roadmap is an excellent communication tool that allows us to talk about things we normally talk about, like the role of technology, and also on the soft side of other dimensions and choices.
•
These elements are comprehensive and inclusive in terms of knowledge domains and problems.
•
The roadmap allows and nurtures the understanding, integration, and respect among the stakeholders involved in these early stages of a capital project. It provides a virtual means of communication to people who are normally left out or don’t know how to participate, e.g., venders and suppliers, O&M people.
•
The roadmap offers entry points for the application of tools such as life cycle costing to measure impact, performance, sots, and benefits, which is something that is not done currently. The roadmap would help do it.
•
These elements allow for exploration of many alternatives in each project.
Specific Opportunities Posed by F/CPTR Elements #1 and #2 These elements can help develop hard technologies to address design, especially conceptual design. Integrating planning with visualization leads to practical systems. The roadmap can be used to develop flexible systems to support planning and design – systems that enable the collective use of technology, avoiding single output designs. It’s not a black box. There is a chance to education designers, particularly those that “don’t know what they don’t know”, while lifting the constraints of past schemes. These elements help define what information we have throughout the process for decision making, which is what is really important about it. The map also helps remove barriers to technology. It enables thinking about interfaces, especially those that strengthen the links between hardware, software, and people. The map allows us to take a step back and rethink how we do planning and design, thus overcoming the legacy of the past and the status quo of the present.
Page A8–37
Breakout Group No. 2: Focused on the Procurement and Construction Phases of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 3 and 4) General Strengths •
Breadth of technical issues combined with specificity of vision
•
Push toward actual LC integration
•
Framework for research to allow people to situate themselves within a broader picture
•
Identifies industry issues with a level of generality to all construction
•
Integrated, complete framework
•
Ambitious overall scope
•
Holistic view
•
Try to involve all stakeholders
•
Industry-relevant
•
Provides a win-win for everybody
•
Focuses on right issues: integration, human resources
•
Aligned with ongoing current research
•
Works pretty well as a roadmap – more than others.
•
Large effort
•
Rallying point for researchers
•
Vision is good, but not the tactical plans.
General Opportunities •
Chance for real impact on industry, including chance for wide outreach and forcing collaboration
•
Place for construction research community to come together, including industry, government, and academia
•
Research under realistic conditions
Page A8–38
•
Common goal might be achieved
•
Opportunity to understand and appreciate each other
•
Change the image of the industry and attract new students, new blood by making it a high tech industry
•
Compete globally and strengthen the construction sector
•
Encapsulates knowledge and experience, and provides a basis for more training and education.
•
It develops a common reference mod3el for academic research
•
Builds bridges
•
Can drive more coherent research funding (additive and synergistic – scaffolding)
•
Helps industry understand research priority and increase awareness of problems and opportunities
•
Can create a technology-driven business case
•
Helps identify fundamental research needs
•
Drives technology adoption life cycle, which is hard for academics to do.
Specific Strengths and Opportunities Posed by F/CPTR Elements #3 and #4 •
Makes job site a better place to work
•
Makes designers aware of construction issues
•
Communications about what’s happening on the ground (state awareness)
•
Better planning and control
•
Better proactive decision making
•
Better trust
•
Chance to integrate technology with processes
•
Chance to rewrite the roadmap with input from academics
•
Chance to rework processes with IT as a catalyst for process change
Page A8–39
•
Can radically improve health and safety
•
Chance to save time in resource allocation
•
Radically improve efficiency
•
Automatic data acquisition
•
Demonstrate that construction is a technical process
•
Detailed – identifies projects
•
Some integration across the map
•
Benefits are unevenly distributed
•
Raises the level of all players
Barriers, Obstacles, and Inhibitors •
Industry is a moving target – mergers, acquisitions, and no long-term plans.
•
Cost-benefit – how to get low-tech players involved?
•
How to spread to multiple industries/sub-industries?
•
Not enough focus on site construction processes – the map is at a very high level.
•
Lack of willingness to share advancements because of protection of competitive edge.
•
Lack of detailed information on what is really needed.
•
Lack of trust.
•
Legislative requirements for public works, where local issues hinder public good.
•
Legal issues, contracts, and liabilities.
•
Misalignment of fundamental motivations among participants in two ways: 1) current system focuses on reduction of interdependencies among systems; and 2) incremental changes may lead to higher levels of interdependencies. Creative tension.
•
Who is the model for? The map seems to require integrated companies, which don’t exist.
•
Risk management – how do we take a systems view and provide incentives?
Page A8–40
•
Technology is a moving target.
•
Validation and metrics are not identified.
•
Technologies are not accepted at the field level.
•
Who’s first?
•
Practitioners lack holistic view.
•
Who pays?
•
Who benefits?
•
There’s a worry about generating excessive expectations.
•
Technology does not seem to be need-driven.
Breakout Group No. 3: Focused on the Operations Phase of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Element 5) •
•
General Comments Roadmap is about pooling resources: o Funding o Opportunities o Data o Collaboration Roadmap is a good starting point: o Needs to be independent of technology in order to stay current! o Performance-oriented General Strengths •
Roadmap is a mechanism for communication between academia and industry.
•
Comprehensive – e.g., project preparation.
•
Good starting point for discussion.
•
Good perspective on industry needs – formally documented.
•
Long-term vision, broad participation.
•
Framework for collaboration and coordinated research in a fragmented industry.
•
Will help develop concurrency and true integration.
Page A8–41
•
Good visual representation!
•
Provides a guide for individual researchers to stay on track.
•
Good overall technology descriptions.
•
Enthusiasm and ambition.
General Opportunities •
Pooled funding.
•
To have one aligned voice – research + industry – to go after BIG funding.
•
Mechanism for proof of concepts – pairing of research + industry.
•
Opportunity to develop consensus metrics of success.
•
Industry pull vs. research push.
•
Kick starting education of industry on fundamental issues – it’s harder than they think!
•
Establishing a common language.
•
Establish the VALUE of academia: extra pool of resources to support industry R&D, especially using industry as a data source.
•
Opportunity to define problems better.
•
Data sharing.
•
This is a roadmap created through remote sensing – a starting point for validation.
•
Can be living, not static, document – needs to continuously evolve and be better defined.
•
This is a start, not the end!
•
Redefining building performance, e.g., importance of operations!
•
Look beyond first cost.
•
Change the culture of the industry – fragmentation and competition.
•
Interdisciplinary research (especially in Elements 5 and 6).
Page A8–42
•
Need business and delivery models.
•
May create a NEW industry to link “behind the scenes”, e.g., the new AutoDesk.
•
Enhance image of the low-tech, dirty industry.
•
Establish new theory.
Challenges and Solutions Challenge Companies are not typical – mainly large firms (EPC domination). Same with academic side: • Lack of small/housing sector • IT-centric Missing non-technology aspects: • Production • Organizations/relationships • Contracts Industry conservatism: • Small profit margins • Fear of loss of market share • High stakes to stay in business Industry is largely unregulated, with low entry requirements Lack of R&D budgets in industry: • Low margins • No competitive advantage of being on “bleeding edge” • No incentives for innovation
Discussion is not embedded in larger industry problems – blindness toward endemic industry problems; pro-innovation bias
Solution Bring small and medium size firms on board – broad representation, including housing. Broaden representation.
Study these elements, and link business models to the “techie” roadmap.
• • •
FIATECH demos and case studies Researchers need to do a better job proving Create a research endowment.
• •
More regulation Bigger margins
• •
Bigger margins Roadmap from business and human perspectives • Fee on contractors to fund innovation • Regulation/incentives – policy solutions Big player endorsement, not just the “techies”
Page A8–43
Challenge First cost mentality
Solution •
Lack of success metrics Education/training is a SLOW route to change Roadmap is targeted to big players and PhD’s – target audience is not equal to user base! Waterfall model of process – we’re still in silos!
Lack of client orientation: • Who’s it for? • What’s the value? Lack of cohesive data/feedback/learning perspective
Full-scale demonstration projects (by government) • Public sector push: investments and policy • Real study of savings/cost avoidance Tie to business models New approach to change Include subs in development – they have a big influence and are very different demographically •
Client orientation: how to deliver VALUE? • Estuary model • Revise vision to make parallel subprocesses Integration, including DB/DBO done correctly •
Intentionally structure the system for learning and data collection • Organizational learning, not just Element 8 Need a pusher! Market share insisting on this… Link to business model
Implicit assumption that data flow/interoperability is key, but inherent conflict of interest for horizontal interoperability Bottom line: Can industry handle these dramatic changes?
Breakout Group No. 4: Focused on the Life Cycle Integration Issues for a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 6 and 9) General Strengths •
Comprehensive, holistic, coordinated, visionary
•
Defines problems
•
Practical Page A8–44
•
Links vision with solution
•
Only trying to change big players (smaller ones are assumed to follow)
•
Provides a venue/context to justify academic research
•
Reflects body of academic research in this area
•
Has validated the impact of IT
General Opportunities •
Homeland security
•
Presenting construction as a viable market to the IT industry (FIATECH should go to the IT industry)
•
Provides shorter time lag between research and application
•
Provides a way to have smaller contractors increase levels of automation
•
Could provide evidence for need for government and industry to fund certain research efforts
•
Documents needs for industry-government-academic partnerships
•
Now we can bring tech providers to table and move vision forward
•
Needs to broaden roadmap to other parts of the construction industry
•
This is an occasion not to miss the industry rethinking and sharing what they do – it doesn’t happen often.
•
Municipalities are bankrupt and can’t afford to do business as usual.
•
Roadmap could be a seed for a network of other roadmaps built by academics built on and around the roadmap.
•
Opportunity to build a business case
•
Chance to address human factors
•
Chance to change education
•
Chance to define metrics to determine degree of success
•
Chance to attract high quality talent to the sector
Page A8–45
Barriers •
Industry funding has been minimal to date
•
Need buy-in from all 3: government, industry, and academia
•
Lack of metrics
•
Improper documentation of roadmap
•
Implementation hurdles – who will pay? Who will sustain?
•
High expectations
•
Lack of complete understanding by researchers of the processes in the construction industry, thus creating need for internships, case studies, focus groups from the academic community to study these processes
•
Lack of ROI models
•
Path vision has clearly stated lofty goals to be achieved with metrics
•
Fragmentation of industry and contracting arrangements – projects are chosen based on low bid
•
Government does not operate currently in this vision, and it could
•
Industry is risk and change-averse, so unless government invests it won’t happen
•
Lack of involvement with subs – they need buy-in before benefit
•
EPC industry – regulation will be a barrier
•
No one government will be able to affect change globally
•
Do we have a workforce?
Additional Comments •
Technological advances in computing will continue to progress rapidly – how do we stay abreast of what is available to take advantage of?
•
Lack of business and delivery model.
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•
Create new industry behind the scenes, e.g., like AutoDesk for sensors in the AECFM industry.
•
Relationships with new business models like design/build.
•
The automated SC and construction site can only be implemented in small steps; what are these steps?
•
Which direction do we want to go? − Develop specific or specialized process (unique ideas), so called better processes or best practices. − Develop more generalized processes so that everyone can use it. (Generalized ideas).
•
CEM processes – used to be intellectual property, but not any more.
•
CEM + IT = IS (IM, IE)
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APPENDIX 9 Critique
Page A9–1
Critique This appendix contains a synthesis of the main critique of the F/CPTR done by the participants in the charrette, and the full set of results as captured during the charrette. The material contained in this section was collected through Formal Input Sheets No. 3 submitted prior to the charrette and posted on the charrette web site, and also, submitted during the charrette. It also contains material collected through the facilitated breakout group discussions held during Session 7 of the charrette. These comments have not been edited beyond basic spelling, grammar, and formatting modifications, and reflect ideas as originally presented by the contributors for discussion in the charrette. Consequently, some redundancy was unavoidable.
Synthesis This section contains an overview of themes emerging from the critiques of the F/CPTR by the participants in the charrette. Within the discussion on opportunities for improvement of the roadmap, multiple participants in the charrette stated their believe that F/CPTR: •
Does not capture the rich interrelations of its nine elements. There seems to be a great deal of overlap in these nine elements. The logistics for collaboration of the participants in these various elements are missing.
•
Does not clearly articulate the business process models to be supported, the needs driven by these models, and the metrics by, which successful solutions to these needs can be determined to be effective. The F/CPTR should be more in the form of a performance specification, defining the desired needs/outcomes and the metrics to be used in evaluating them. As it is, the F/CPTR focuses more on technology developments that could be applied to existing business processes. The detailed functional needs for each of the F/CPTR elements are not provided by most of the tactical plans. Rather, these plans present a patchwork of specific technology deployment projects without presenting a coherent picture of the needs.
•
Needs to cite previous research efforts that offer fundamental knowledge and alternatives for delivering solutions to the functional needs in each element.
•
Does not include some important phases of the facility delivery process, such as conceptual design. Because the F/CPTR is EPC oriented, other missing pieces of this vision will be discovered when it is broadened to include other facility domains.
•
Is too overly focused on complete automation when it should be more focused on providing intelligent assistance to humans. Areas such as knowledge-enabled workforce are listed, but details are sketchy, and the entire area of human-computer interaction is minimally addressed.
Several participants also made critiques of the process by which the roadmap has been/is being developed: Page A9–2
•
While the FCPTR has been more open in its development than other roadmap elements, there has been a lack of a formal mechanism for obtaining structured, continuing input from technical experts. Much of the development has been a volunteer effort. There was a general sense among charrette participants that the Roadmap has matured to a state where there needs to be a more focused and coordinated development effort. A more structured approach will make it easier for the academic community to contribute to the Roadmap development.
•
Based on the substantive critiques of the FCPTR briefly summarized above and detailed in the Appendices of this report, it was generally felt that FIATECH’s efforts at identifying and prioritizing specific projects with the Roadmap might be premature. It was generally felt that the “vision statement” of the FCPTR should be more fully vetted for completeness, challenges, and coordination among the elements. It was further felt that such work is an area where the academic community could play an important role.
•
The FCPTR does not make clear who should be doing this work and who will own the intellectual property resulting from this massive effort. Several workshop participants felt that FIATECH needs to make its role clear and that it should not consider its role to be the supplier of comprehensive solutions.
Consolidated Results from Pre-charrette Formal Input Sheets Critique of the Overall Roadmap •
Intellectually it is stimulating to try to envision the future life cycle of a capital project. Many different approaches would be available, but this focus seems to be from an owner perspective, which would be much more pragmatic or idealistic (academic if you will). At this point the overlaps need to be more effectively determined and linked to get a better, more streamlined approach to the vision document. One item that seems to not be connected well between the elements is the integration of facility management into the roadmap. For instance, how can the design, procurement, construction process integrate the maintenance/operation requirements into the capital project plan. How can the automated technologies being developed for construction be utilized by the FM organization to improve functional operation? The differences between facility management and construction need to be more clearly considered and enumerated.
•
The Overall Roadmap does not demonstrate the influence and role that technology and knowledge enabled workforce would exercise on the process of delivering capital projects. It equally does not give any indication of the effect of, and transformation to be anticipated in achieving the vision of the Roadmap on the delivery of capital projects.
•
The attempt to align what are currently disparate initiatives in many aspects of building industry technology is important. Independently, these efforts are making
Page A9–3
small and sometimes meaningful impacts on the industry. Collectively, vastly superior impacts can be made if collaboration and sharing occurred in the academic community of this industry. Results, outcomes, and even raw data should be shared. This will not be easy to achieve, but should nevertheless be pursued. While providing an overall agenda, the roadmap offers little incentives for academics to collaborate. The roadmap provides little information on how or why researchers and universities should work together. How will work for the roadmap be funded? How do we decide who does what? Moreover, it remains unclear who will own the intellectual property of the work performed under the auspices of the roadmap. Many universities furiously guard their rights to intellectual property. How do we handle these sorts of issues? •
Like: Broad and comprehensive plans Dislike: The plan focuses more on technology developments and processes. I'd like to see some plans that address the importance area of technology-human interface as well. Technologies look good until they are put to the test in the real world
•
GOOD: coverage, ambition, partners, organization BAD buzz words, the automation trap, nothing on user interaction, no substance
Critique of the Elements of the Vision Model •
I like the layout of the roadmap from a functional standpoint in that the lifecycle of a project is captured and the interactions visualized. The interactions between the various participants can be visualized and gaps identified in the information flow.
•
The vision model draws on developments outside the capital project delivery phase. It demonstrates that the viability of capital developments often transcend technological considerations.
•
The roadmap provides a vision for working together and assimilating the work various institutions conduct. However, the model does not really explain the details and logistics of working together. The elements of the model help to define specific areas of the model, but do little to address how it will be carried out. This is an important question to be addressed. It is also unclear how the work and results in each element will be assimilated across the other elements of the model. This will be important because what occurs in one element will have significant impacts on what occurs in other elements. This is a significant challenge for any model of capital projects.
•
Like: Comprehensiveness. The elements cover all processes involved in capital projects in the A/E/C industry. Dislike: Lack of description of cross-element integration and collaboration.
•
GOOD - purpose, benefits, vision BAD: promising too much, the automation trap Page A9–4
Critique of the Focus Areas of the Tactical Plan •
The focus areas need to be very closely integrated to work the entire roadmap. The major challenge is the starting point and the intersection of the elements.
•
The focus area of Automated design a rational view of the possible changes required to transform and to make more efficient the delivery of design. This appears to be based on the notion that less human intervention would lead to greater efficiency.
•
The focus areas make sense in terms of the dimensions of the model. However, I believe the model abstracts away from important cross-element opportunities for improvement. This seems to be critical to making this roadmap work effectively.
•
Like: Great ideas and plans. Dislike: The description needs further detail to outline exact methods and expected deliverables.
•
GOOD: coverage, ambition, people BAD titles too long, buzz words, no budget, who does what? How will you measure your success? Yardsticks are ESSENTIAL
Consolidated Results from Charrette Formal Input Sheets Critique of the Overall Roadmap •
It is isolated from the rest of the construction business.
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No references cited (though sections are provided for it) – there is a lot done already that contributes to points of the roadmap.
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Are there easy wins – areas where tools are pretty good already, vs. areas that have been really overlooked and need work urgently, or maybe not now?
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Need to integrate elements.
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Gap analysis.
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Identification of what is subject to research, development, and deployment. What is the scope of NSF, FIATECH, or NIST?
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Does it work in all project delivery/contracting methods?
•
At the highest level the roadmap is very interesting presentation of a nice vision for the industry, agencies, and funding sources. At its lower level, where trying to define the tactical plan, the roadmap lost its capability of defining research and sometimes even its credibility. Page A9–5
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The vision statements are good and in a direction toward making the industry better.
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Seems to have missing links in the boxes.
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Whose scope are the blanks? Sometime more important.
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I would have liked to see more of the functional requirement discussions, the needs, the categories of needs, the current challenges in achieving the vision.
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The descriptions at the project level vary. The sizes of the project vary quite a bit and seem random. There is quite a lot of early commitment to a technology type.
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The project descriptions should be general and a description of the problem and challenges (strength of the industry).
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A lot of repetition among the projects on the roadmap.
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Strategic construction site planning is missing.
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Very low on “how”.
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Theoretical aspects are not clear.
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Roadmap does not acknowledge interdependency between elements.
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Few projects needed to be developed and tested.
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While the projects outlined are adequate steps in developing the integrated construction model, they do not reflect what needs to be researched. What are the theoretical foundations and what new knowledge is needed?
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Too many projects without understanding the research questions that need to be answered.
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The projects in the tactical plan may not further the vision.
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The notion of the tactical level doesn’t make sense. Many of these issues are themselves far beyond the capacity of FIATECH under the most optimistic scenarios. FIATECH should not consider its role to be a supplier of comprehensive solutions.
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There are many common topics across elements – this “cross-element perspective” should be captured somehow.
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This roadmap is a wish list or a high-end vision for the next seven years. Most projects are 3-5 years.
Page A9–6
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This is not a research project plan. It needs a business case to motivate broader impact and intellectual merit.
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Who should define funding, schedule, motivation, and evaluation method?
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Performance-based specification would be a good form for the roadmap.
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Need flexibility to adapt to changing needs and technologies.
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Implementation strategy, short, medium, and long term. Need a process!
•
Provides a plan for technology but lacks a plan for implementation and getting buy-in from industry end users.
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Education side completely missing.
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Plan needs to be dynamic and maintained over time.
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Researchers should be more involved in the research planning required (Industry does not have research expertise).
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It is a prescriptive spec, defining details vs. what it should be. A performance spec would define what is needed and how it should be done.
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Need to have more emphasis on education.
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More performance specification, less prescriptive.
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More focus on communication and human factors.
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More reference to existing state of development.
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Time horizon.
•
Automated design – the idea of “automating” design is wrong – this shows a lack of understanding of human factors, which will be crucial for the success of what is being proposed.
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The roadmap has no idea of the process change that can be accomplished by the appropriate use of these new technologies.
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There is no idea of parallel working – can be achieved using new technologies.
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There is no idea of concatenating and at the same time improving the process.
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It is too long, too prescriptive; they should define the outcomes they need and leave it to academics to deliver.
Page A9–7
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The road map is a “brief” that can help to formulate a “full design” of how capital projects should be developed. It however has a limited outlook and has missed an opportunity to take on broad socio-cultural issues related to the deployment of technologies.
•
The vision and perhaps horizon for realizing the aspirations is rather too short to align effectively with research. It can support the development part of R&D, but not the research part.
•
The roadmap provides a good perspective of what the industry’s needs are. There probably will be many good research topics that could derive from the roadmap, the elements, and the product-driven research packages. I assume individual researchers will come up with their own research ideas.
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It is too much technology – how do we distinguish this as technology implementation as opposed to domain-specific research agenda?
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From an academic standpoint, I think that each component has been subdivided into work packages and not necessarily research questions. Of course, to accomplish many packages there is a need to answer research questions. However, that needs some creativity to comply with NSF research criteria.
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Not stated as research questions. These are all prototype, development, and deployment problems. No science.
•
What would one have to do to create these products? Would they be effective?
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All about tools, but not solutions.
•
Missing the owners, the researchers, and the research sponsors.
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What research methods can apply to this?
•
The map does not look at the human factors, i.e., motivation, training, leadership, etc.
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The map does not address the business case for inventing, developing, and implementing new technologies (i.e., cost/benefit analysis, return on investment, competing edges, marketing, etc.)
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Performance measures of outcomes are not mentioned on the map.
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Missing input from subs, vendors, workers, etc.
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Need to develop the integration between elements and flesh out the linkages and gaps, which will lead to the next version of the document.
Page A9–8
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Look at the document more in business processes through the life cycle – capture the vision of process change.
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Technology should only be an implementer, not a final solution.
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Is seven-year timeline realistic without a start date?
•
Difficult to define a research agenda from the roadmap. The map identifies areas but not research questions.
•
What is the problem the roadmap is fixing? Presented as a solution, but the problem has not been defined.
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Hard to know the purpose of the roadmap in the context of research.
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Can’t stand up as a technical plan as it currently exists.
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The elements and projects are artificially separated. The cross element/project management is not addressed.
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Projects are not defined as research but as technology development. In fact, the translation into research is very obscured by the tone of the document.
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Unrealistic time frames.
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Link to other work is not articulated, nor is the link to methods.
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Lack of focus on sustainability issues.
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Mechanisms for live knowledge capture and reuse is missing.
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Life cycle management of requirements is missing.
•
Need functional integration models and their measurements: schedule and cost, cost and contract, earned value method, contract and claims, PMIS and applications.
•
We cannot computerize all off-line activities!
•
The roadmap appears to be a wish list of end capabilities and steps to get to the end points.
•
Thorough research of the background and especially what has already been done is not evident.
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It is an IT roadmap with little consideration for people/process change.
Page A9–9
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The gist of the roadmap seems to be big systems and models FIATECH will develop instead of a roadmap of needed collaboration and technical capabilities.
•
Optimistic plans, weak execution details.
•
Lot of good ideas, but difficulties lie in “where the rubber meets the road”.
•
There seems to be a need for an education element that addresses training and interfacing with the industry.
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Like industry impact and comprehensiveness.
•
Don’t like uni-dimensionality, rosiness and naiveté, lack of specificity, and lack of account of sustainability.
•
There is no new theory in the roadmap. The only element where I see a new theory being created is the ontology portion of element 9. This is where academic research is much needed to help industry build a knowledge model of its mechanism, processes, and constraints. It’s also the one element that will assure success for other elements through assuring a common language.
•
Focus areas and projects do not present a consistent and logical view of what industry is saying they need.
•
Vision would be best expressed in terms of what is needed, what business process models are envisioned, and what expected improvements (i.e., metrics) are anticipated.
•
Lack of protocols for data collection, archiving, and ensuring integrity.
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Lack of use cases/test bed development.
•
Overall naïve vision.
Critique of the Elements of the Vision Model •
Rename “automated design”.
•
There is a schedule without a blueprint or budget.
•
Forces researchers to think more realistically on industry issues.
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Allows the alignment of collaborative efforts between all parties.
•
The ontology development seems to go in a top-down approach, where researchers and industry will model knowledge (may be in OWL). There should be another
Page A9–10
component that should focus on knowledge discovery as we go. Mainly through data mining, which is missing in element 9. •
The implementation elements (or sub-elements) in element 9 present the golden opportunity to get IT industry involved in this. Element 9 should be the cornerstone for interfacing with the IT industry. Vendors, more than owners, could be a more sustainable customer of our research!!
•
There’s a lot of hoopla in concepts and ideas, but lack of details in how the technologies may change the industry.
•
Element 9 – there are many proven requirements engineering techniques that can be applied. E9-FA1-P1 needs to identify and adopt.
•
The link between elements 6 and 9 is not explored. For example, element 6 discusses processes while element 9 discusses workflow. There needs to have a clear understanding about them and their relationships.
•
Ontology is good and is not the question. There are existing efforts such as IFC that should be referenced.
•
Data Transport Method is just a matter of selection and use.
•
There needs to be a clear understanding as to what workflow capabilities are needed. When workflow rules are “standardized”, how will business be affected?
•
The diverse nature of the culture, processes, organizations, and dynamics all play a role in the roadmap. Leave the roadmap as a catalyst for thoughts, ideas, and collaboration. Any attempt to “push” the roadmap to products is useless.
•
Lack of performance measurement method.
•
Legal issues such as alternative dispute resolution and claims are lacking.
•
Integration with functional applications, e.g., scheduling programs, estimating programs, is lacking.
•
Communication with other industries, e.g., banking, is lacking.
•
Don’t look at the topics as independent!
•
Focus on academic challenges is lacking.
•
Elements 6 and 9 are needed.
•
How do we use the information gained from O&M? During O&M? How are we going to use O&M information during design and construction?
Page A9–11
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Breakdown is artificial.
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How to do the information exchange?
•
Deferred maintenance is not addressed.
•
A reality check needs to be applied to all projects.
•
Element 5 is too far in the future – fiction.
•
Element 6 has unclear separation of “around the corner” applications and fundamental changes.
•
Need more input from the maintenance community.
•
Need to understand the maintenance/operations concepts and develop associated theory.
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Still to much separation of construction and maintenance.
•
Element 5 is weak on human factors. It defines a real need that’s often overlooked!
•
Define functional requirements, not technological solutions.
•
Bridge solutions are needed for retrofitting existing buildings.
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The strength of the roadmap could be in establishing feedback loops.
•
Project descriptions are not bad – structure is nice but missing evaluation plans.
•
Biggest barriers will be cost and human factors.
•
How to deal with backlogs, e.g., in Element 5? Need a bridge plan.
•
In Element 6, the state of the art seems chaotic and fragmented – is this really true?
•
How is element 6 really different from project management activities?
•
Capturing best practices and lessons learned from element to element and existing players is missing.
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Element 6 seems reactive, e.g., focus on regulatory compliance.
•
Missing organizational theory!
•
Division of elements is arbitrary. Division into projects is arbitrary. Are these pet projects or do they comprehensively partition the world?
Page A9–12
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Element 5 is visionary but very specific. Is this of broad interest? Does it have a real benefit?
•
Element 6 is more practical and of more broad interest. Where is maintenance management? Cable management? Very little operations. No demolition. Not for owner. No maintenance planning.
•
Where is consideration of existing facilities?
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How do you field these “gee whiz” gadgets?
•
Element 6 does not need to stand alone. Move its components to elements 5 and 4.
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Element 5 should focus on data collection. Modeling is software technology.
•
The elements are too independent and isolated.
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Strategy plan is lacking.
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Organizational/social/human factors and research are inadequate.
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Business/marketing/delivery mechanisms and models are missing.
•
Vision is more for big contractors but seems to lack input from owners and subcontractors.
•
Most items identified in elements 5 and 6 are visionary, but some are Harry Potter.
•
Conceptual design is marginalized. This is wrong. We have emerging technologies for conceptual design using stochastic search, etc.
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The design component is too much oriented towards the visions of CAD suppliers and developers.
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The virtual reality vision is far too limited. Immersive VR will replace CAD as the design test of the future.
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Lack of integration across the elements could result in islands of optimization.
•
Conceptual design is completely missing from the map and that is the stage when the most important decisions are made.
•
Remove “automated design” emphasis – change to computer-aided design.
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Conceptual design is a lost element.
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Technology-enabled design.
Page A9–13
•
The notion of knowledge-enabled work force is included in the report, but organizational learning appears to be left out – multi-organizational learning, multiproject learning, corporate culture, tacit vs. explicit knowledge.
•
Simulation aspects of construction processes needs development.
•
The elements are interdependent and this interdependence needs to be more clearly identified.
•
The visions for supply chain and job site are not achievable without appropriate changes to the planning/design process. I am not sure that this compatibility is there in the tactical plans.
•
There should be something that captures a time dimension and overall revolutionary/paradigm shifts of these.
•
Now, vision breaks down into elements, focus areas and projects. Maybe vision should be broken down into functional requirements/technical solutions, and then compared to phases/paradigms, and projects mapped to these.
•
Lean concept should be taken up and developed.
•
As-built model needs to be further investigated.
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Process integration with the supply chain needs to be developed.
•
Schedule modeling (in terms of program development and verification) needs development.
•
The use of IFC (or any standard) to model construction product, process, and site operations needs to be included.
•
The projects are all seen from a technical point of view. From a business point of view other questions must be answered: how will the integrated supply chain impact business processes, e.g., increased coordination? What are the risks? What happens to my competitive edge? Innovation? Trust? Etc.
•
The vision is good. It consolidates the outcomes of IT research, presenting in a clear and concise way the industry needs and the possible research direction to fulfill those needs.
•
At the elements level, the bigger idea is still well defined, breaking the problem into smaller chunks that allow better research scope definition.
•
Elements of the vision model are good.
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Links/interfaces between elements are important. Some of them are missing. Page A9–14
Critique of the Focus Areas of the Tactical Plan •
Projects in elements overlap with each other or could be linked better.
•
The word “theory” is lacking as a means to present a conceptual framework. Theory is what makes data/information/knowledge relevant!
•
The focus areas don’t have the research backup. How do we optimize work processes if we don’t know what the work processes are?
•
How do we know what field information to collect/supply? We need to know this before we can provide standards and practices.
•
Optimize work processes – you can’t optimize what you can’t define.
•
I like some of the higher-level focus areas.
•
The selection of processes, the decomposition of focus areas to projects seems random.
•
Early commitment to certain technologies.
•
The focus area is the big problem of the roadmap. Here the roadmap lost the opportunity to better understand the why and what to focus on while transforming the roadmap into an inflexible document.
•
Element 3 has a lot of standard development. Is it FIATECH’s or NSF’s role? Some projects encompass stuff form other projects – there are overlaps. Issues of thrust, partnerships, alliances were not considered. Need to adapt to different project delivery/contracting methods.
•
Element 4 needs a definition of metrics for benchmarking. It should also incorporate people, culture, and process issues and define functional requirements.
•
The sustainability of element 9 requires that FIATECH plants the bamboo seed, and then acts as a strategist and caller for development just like the object management group.
•
For some projects, researchers could contribute right away. If endorsed by NSF and industry, funding can enable very interesting/useful projects to proceed.
•
Projects lack coordination among themselves (160!!) – there’s lots of overlap, relative scheduling of many is wrong, etc.
•
“Do more” attitude – many research projects have been done over the years on the same topics.
Page A9–15
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Critical aspects are missing in project definitions – resources needed, methodology, etc.
•
E6-FA1-P4: vague “project management toolset”. Where does intelligence come from? Can we fully automate? What are the paradigm-changing underlying theories? Researcher’s contribution.
•
E6-FA2-P2 – data, data, data. The how is missing.
•
In element 9, lots of academic problems to research – knowledge representation. Big area of work in common repository information. ALIS seems to be a set of interoperable software. Seems like IAI was not considered even though IAI has done most in this focus area.
•
Elements 5 and 6 need to be combined and aligned with subtraction of the futuristic focus areas, which should be grouped separately. FAs 4, 5, and 6 in Element 5 are futuristic.
•
Element 6 is in general very good.
•
Element 5 needs rethinking.
•
Focus areas capture most of the important aspects within Elements 5 and 6, but missing are focus areas that exchange information across focus areas and across roadmap elements. For example, O&M information is most useful in design and construction.
•
Add “design” to E6-FA3. This will enhance integration with other elements.
•
Teaming strategies for project delivery – where is this in the roadmap?
•
Probably need to focus on more explicit titles/focus areas so the vision is more easily understood.
•
FAs for element 6 are very project-oriented so the O&M management gets lost in the roadmap.
•
Security issues and monitoring of air and water quality in facilities need to be addressed.
•
A look of various accelerated construction and reconstruction techniques is missing.
•
Safety and health issues including ergonomics and human factors during construction and maintenance needs to be included.
•
E5-FA1 – Need to prioritize by most critical systems. Life safety first, then comfort, then convenience for sensing, auto configuring. Too ambitious. Page A9–16
•
E5-FA2 is very vague. Define performance and its many dimensions and prioritize them.
•
E5-FA3 0 Use IAI/STEP methods.
•
E5-FA4 – Implausible.
•
E5-FA5 – Define and categorize catastrophic event. Too vague.
•
E5-FA6 – Vague. Timeline is not believable.
•
E6-FA1 – There is a good existing foundation. This also applies for FA 2 and FA 3.
•
E6-FA4 – unclear.
•
E6-FA5 – Existing foundation to do this.
•
E6-FA6 – Unclear.
•
E6-FA7 – Some interesting ideas. This also applies for FA 8.
•
Interrelationships are not apparent between focus areas.
•
Definition of intelligent, self-healing facility is needed.
•
Topics are good representations – actual processes/activities depend on individual view on that topic.
•
Not sure what “automated/integrated” mean in E5-FA6.
•
Maintenance, security, resources – energy, water, health and safety needs to be emphasized.
•
The focus areas are too detailed.
•
Procurement should be part of planning and design.
•
Nothing on constraints capture and modeling.
•
Nothing on multi-criteria, multi-objective decision making.
•
Change automated design to technology-enabled design.
•
Conceptual design is missing.
•
Form follows function.
Page A9–17
•
Too EPC-oriented. Where’s architecture?
•
Overlaps between tacit plans – how to resolve these?
Additional Comments •
Academia/researchers must lead and care at the same time.
•
Need to fund technologies that enable people to analyze scenarios quickly, and flexible user interfaces and tools.
•
We have the roadmap but are missing our vehicle.
•
Where is the human side of the deployment of more technologies in delivering capital projects?
•
Where are the lessons from present experiences in deploying technologies in delivering capital projects, and what lessons have they for the aspirations of the roadmap?
•
Many of the problems can be addressed with research projects on: 1) multi-objective, multi-criteria constrained decision making and search of these spaces; 2) concatenating the design/procurement process; 3) automated procurement; and 4) advanced tools for project planning.
•
Researchers each should be able to take this roadmap to decide on research issues.
•
In many ways, research/PhDs typically deal with more focused problems.
•
Basic problems are to mine data in existing digital and paper repositories and analyze that data.
•
Create expense/cost/benefit model that can apply to IT development.
•
FIATECH -> invent products.
•
Devise assessment methods to know whether expected benefits are achieved.
•
Traveling down the same path as IAI: it is an industry initiative, dropped by industry, and picked up by academia, slowly making progress.
•
Academia adds ability to hone the question.
•
Academic research is in a parallel universe from FIATECH.
•
Development of the BORG for the maintenance function – self-repairing and selfmaintaining system of systems.
Page A9–18
•
We really need to have a thorough explanation of the way the roadmap was laid out. Listening to the discussion, much of the rationale for how the map has been developed is lost and much time was lost in trying to define the understanding of the roadmap.
•
A reality check needs to be applied to all projects.
•
FIATECH’s roadmap is developed based on the industry’s understanding of their current problems and needs. Researchers must understand and care about this roadmap, but should not be limited to the areas of the map. Researchers must lead and address more fundamental/basic issues/theories to support the more applied research envisioned by the roadmap.
•
Perhaps we should treat these tactical plans as “targets” of applied research and ask ourselves what “basic research” we should do to support these applied ones?
Comments on Acronyms •
P. 8 – Data/Info/Knowledge – ASCII vs. XML – The comment on XML vs. ASCII is misleading. The example is ok. More general comment. XML is just another data specification or modeling language, which may have advantages over other modeling languages. It’s not a panacea.
•
P. 9 – Data representation and data representation model – DRM = data representation model? A model is a representation. This is not a common term used in the database community – data model. Data schema is more common. We should try to avoid creating idiosyncratic acronyms. We are already lost in an alphabet soup. “A roadmap should be generic.” – Another buzzword is scenario-based project planning – very narrowly scoped.
•
P. 19 – XML – weak, misleading definition. Seamless flow of text-based information. XML can also specify “geometry-based” or geometric information.
•
P. 10 – Smart container for information – is this a theoretical term or just a nice metaphor?
•
P. 10 – plug & play – where’s the definition?
•
P. 10 – STEP – this is an unofficial abbreviation.
•
P. 10 – structured vs. unstructured data – Definition – unstructured data is not the “stuff” that makes up 80-90% of the info in an organization. Is an electronic file unstructured? No. Unstructured data is a data that is not organized in an easily recognizable pattern or form.
•
P. 11 – understanding and wisdom – no act of understanding.
Page A9–19
Consolidated Results from Charrette Facilitated Breakout Group Discussions Breakout Group No. 1: Focused on the Planning and Design Phases of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 1 and 2) General Critique of the F/CPTR •
There does not seem to be any relation to education, awareness, and training throughout all the heterogeneous aspects of the roadmap. It misses an opportunity to bring professionals up to speed in new technology, and at the same time, to bring down the technology from its pedestal.
•
There needs to be more explicit recognition between and among the requirements of each of the elements: what’s common to all, and also what’s peculiar to each.
•
The roadmap lacks flexibility in its current form because it defines problems while prescribing solutions and this misses the chance to develop an approach more compatible with the moving target posed by the capital delivery process. It misses the opportunity to reframe the problem in search of a better solution space.
•
Because of its solution orientation, this can change the perception of the problem. The roadmap has a sense of finality.
•
In its current form, the seven-year time horizons seem unjustified, and given the nature of technological development required by this roadmap, the time horizon should be longer and somewhat hazier. Calendar time for implementation is really meaningless, because a better option is to express time in person-years of research effort and cost.
•
There are several core research issues under the surface of the map that are not well defined, and, which also create high levels of variability in terms of cost and time.
•
Although the current vision is strong, it would be good to know where FIATECH and its associated partners see the capital projects industry in 20 years.
•
The human side of the map is an opportunity lost; in the past, much technology did not mature and those lessons do not seem to be reflected, nor do they demonstrate how much we’ve learned about why they were not adopted.
•
The graphical depiction of the map actually conveys a view of “same old, same old”, thus missing an opportunity to more creatively address the various processes involved.
Page A9–20
•
The map does not have an explicit focus on the innovation process, on the change process, on the paradigm shift process, and all the implications that are heralded by the new era.
•
The map, following this analogy, is missing the driving instructions and the vehicle to reach its vision.
•
Business model propositions behind the map are not clear or evident. Where is the business case?
•
The map currently depends too much on tangible outcomes, and that may be the reason why there’s not focus on mindsets and paradigms.
•
Many IT solutions addressed by the map carry intangible outcomes, posing the challenge of how do you measure success?
•
The map can be interpreted in two very different ways. The first is as a monolithic entity, and the second is as a set of incremental steps. It’s not clear what exactly it is.
•
The map is missing a much more explicit and formal plan for implementation from the five P’s perspective.
•
The roadmap is not a static entity. It should be an organic document.
•
Current list of projects is more like a wish list and not exactly a project plan. There is no specific criterion or methodology for the whole cycle of project management, from conception through planning through design through execution.
•
The second problem with the map is that it has a prescriptive and specific tone to it, when what is needed is a performance specification and general implementation plan.
•
The current way in, which industry is doing business is reflected too much in the map. An opportunity has been missed to really reinvent construction.
•
Scope should not be confused with goals.
•
In order to achieve the vision, it’s necessary to create an intermediate of research as a common asset to industry and academia.
•
The map, as the dawn of a new era, requires new business models, new languages, new paradigms, new research approaches, new education approaches, and an infrastructure compatible with all these needs.
•
A special kind of funding is required to provide an opportunity to groups of academics to do research in an industrial setting, while at the same time, offering the same opportunity to a group of industry practitioners to do research in an academic setting. Page A9–21
•
It’s fairly cheap to prove a concept (factor 1x) but it’s much more expensive to develop prototypes for commercialization (factor 10x).
•
The map does not acknowledge the concepts of “valley of death” and of the Darwinian sea. The opportunity is to use the map as a bridge over the valley and a raft over the sea.
•
The elements of the map are really classes of IT capabilities and the map can benefit from further breakdown into functionalities, because at the core, there are some common technologies across elements that may not be fully captured in the roadmap in its current form. The analogy is that the same car chassis can be used for a whole family of cars; so one model of looking at the map elements is to try to identify the commonalities as a solid inner core, and additional functionalities as a flexible outer core.
•
A nonlinear representation of the map would probably be a better option to express the richness that it entails.
Specific Critique of the F/CPTR Elements #1 and #2 •
Automated emphasis in Element 2 should be deleted and replaced by “technology enabled design” in order to capture the full extent of what that element really represents.
•
Conceptual design, although it’s the most important part of design, is not getting the attention it needs and requires in the map. In its current form, it is an orphan.
•
These elements highlight the tension that exists between the successful intuitives, which base a lot of decisions on the “seat of their pants”, and the cautious successes, which require a large amount of data and information to make a choice.
•
“Form follows software”. Technology enables things to be done today that could not have been done before (Gehry).
•
These elements lack an explicit recognition of constraints, capturing constraints, and modeling constraints.
•
The current version of the map seems to be driven by E & CE, with little participation from A.
•
These elements do not define who is the actual consumer – what’s the audience that they’re trying to reach?
•
In its current form, the map is right on target for its own audience. Taking it to the broader level may require significant enhancements.
Page A9–22
Breakout Group No. 2: Focused on the Procurement and Construction Phases of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 3 and 4) General Critique of the F/CPTR •
Vision needs separation from the tactical plans (these plans are premature).
•
There’s a need to insert “why” for the vision before leaping to “how” for the plan.
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If the map is to be a living document, why have a long term tactical plan, when it would be better to have a 1-2 year tactical plan guided by a broader roadmap (the atlas).
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There’s a need to reorganize and rationalize among elements 3 and 4.
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The map does not acknowledge interdependencies among elements.
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We don’t know what standards should be.
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Implementation of standards – has the "what is now," in terms of incremental advances, going against "what is revolutionary," in terms of advances in all processes.
Random Thoughts Associated with Specific Project Critiques •
Definition of systems – what should be integrated?
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How to represent process knowledge
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How does change management relate to knowledge and standards?
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Who has access to information?
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Doesn’t capture incremental vs. fundamental change.
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There should be a mechanism for evaluating existing solutions, especially as a baseline to compare emerging ones.
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How do you define/quantify synergy?
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“You can’t optimize what you can’t define”
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Need for more explicit definition of the link between site and off-site
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Research for composite metrics, beginning with identifying existing metrics and development of new metrics to measure what we’re trying to achieve.
Page A9–23
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Why should suppliers want to participate?
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Who owns the database?
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Where is lean construction?
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What needs automation? US intelligence?
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Research what data to collect and acquire
•
Where’s the link to all construction management aspects?
Breakout Group No. 3: Focused on the Operations Phase of a Capital Project (F/CPTR Element 5) General Critique of the F/CPTR •
Projects are expressed as PRODUCTS, not RESEARCH QUESTIONS.
•
Every item could have multiple good research topics derived.
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The roadmap is a set of work packages.
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Can we get to a research agenda from the roadmap?
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What problem is the roadmap trying to fix?
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How can an individual researcher fit his/her research in?
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Technology is only an implementation tool, not a solution!
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Map is missing input from OWNERS – we’re only looking at the supply side.
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Map is a good overview of what industry needs (idea generation). The researcher has to be smart to convert to an NSF proposal!
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Technology problems (implementation) vs. fundamental basic research issues.
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No research methods are specified. This is one way to convert a grand problem to a research question.
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They didn’t need thermodynamics to create a steam engine! This is possibly one of the unstated messages of the roadmap.
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Academics are NOT the primary audience. We need to be sensitive to our own foibles.
Page A9–24
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Identifying fundamental problems: − Mine data to see what’s really happening − Cost-benefit model of information − Assessment methods/metrics/performance measures
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Added value of academia: HONING research questions.
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Composition of elements appears to be an artificial dividing up of the pie. How to coordinate?
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This is on the strategic, not technical, level. The details will be worked out.
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There are business reasons for this map to be the way it is.
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Map does not consider human factors, e.g., motivation, etc.
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Map does not address the business case.
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Map is missing inputs from: − Subcontractors − Trade organizations − Unions/labor organizations − Owners − Others?
Specific Critique of the F/CPTR Elements #5 and #6 •
Element 5 is extremely visionary, but need is questionable from a business case standpoint for many project types.
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Elements 5 and 6 might be combined.
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Element 6 is a good reflection of an emerging problem.
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Missing maintenance management systems.
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Element 5 title is misleading.
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Element 5 needs performance models in all its pieces.
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Very little on actual operations.
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How can data feed into other phases?
Page A9–25
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The operations phase typically overlooked, but the roadmap covers it! Thanks!
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Separation of O&M dollars from construction dollars is a real barrier.
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Doesn’t discuss deferred maintenance.
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Needs a bridge plan for existing buildings and retrofits.
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The relationships among functional areas is not clearly defined – no organizing framework.
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Suffers from technophilia – what about passive design solutions?
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Imbalance between applying existing technologies in facilities management and developing completely new, futuristic ones.
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Organizing framework: − Data collection − Engineering modeling − Software technology/user interface
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Element 5 is weak on human factors and may not acknowledge the issues with people responsible for maintenance (e.g., many are not well-educated, resistant to change, resistant to new technology, etc.).
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Timelines are unrealistic with likely funding levels.
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Plans do not take into account the segmentation of the O&M industry – some facilities managers are extremely sophisticated, while others didn’t even finish high school. How to cover the whole range?
Critique Focus Areas F/CPTR Element #5 •
One important focus area needs to be how to integrate Focus Areas within and across elements.
•
Complaint desk data analysis – most O&M is motivated by occupant complaints.
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O&M people have two primary complaints: − They have to deal with user complaints all the time − They’re not involved in design/decision making that could possibly reduce the number of user complaints via better design decisions.
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Monitoring air and water quality in buildings as a security concern is not addressed.
Page A9–26
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Ergonomics and human factors in both construction and maintenance is not mentioned, nor is safety and health.
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Rapid recovery for accelerated construction/reconstruction and maintenance – techniques? Alternatives?
•
Focus area #3 we know how to do pretty well. Others seem vague.
Critique Focus Areas F/CPTR Element #6 •
More approachable than Element 5
•
We all liked it.
Breakout Group No. 4: Focused on the Life Cycle Integration Issues for a Capital Project (F/CPTR Elements 6 and 9) General Critique of the F/CPTR •
Roadmap is a consolidation of what’s already going on.
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The only new contribution is the development of the ontology – product data and process data converging into knowledge.
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Can IFC be a good starting point?
•
Data mining to create models in Element 9 is missing.
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Roadmap describes how IT should be used in current processes, but it’s not discussing how business processes should change to become more efficient, taking advantage of IT where feasible.
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If we had to redo the processes of this industry, how would we do it? This is an academic challenge.
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In Element #6, understand the need to understand functionality.
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Some felt no fundamental issues that need to be developed to deliver Element #9; however, others felt that there are fundamental issues such as granularity, knowledge representation, metadata, and rules.
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IAI is thinking about ontologies, processes, and behaviors. FIATECH must work with IAI to determine fundamental issues that need to be researched.
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How do we extract knowledge and after we get it, how do we give it to vendors and companies?
Page A9–27
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Who is going to be responsible for collecting, archiving, and ensuring the integrity of data?
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Overall, the vision is uni-dimensional – it’s a waterfall model. Somewhat naïve in that no problems will occur.
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How do you capture knowledge throughout a project?
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Not enough recognition of sustainability in the green sense, and implications for data and knowledge.
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Also, issues of sustainability do not seem to be recognized. Vendors need to be first customer.
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Data to be shared must be flexible for different organizations. They must represent and share business processes.
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High-level critique of FIATECH organizational model.
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Where’s the evidence of industry funding to parallel SEMA-TECH model?
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If this doesn’t work, OMG model?
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Funding for projects came from vendors seeking FIATECH stamp.
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Membership for academics.
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Stick with ALIS (BIM) in Element #9.
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Move out of this model.
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Function-specific knowledge should not be in ALIS.
Specific Critique of the F/CPTR Elements #6 and #9 S - Strengths; 0 – Opportunities; B – Barriers B S B S B B
Missing links between process and technologies Good identification of benefits Huge gulf between ideas and vision and proposed schedule Identifies problems that need to be solved Still discussing standards-based approach No data exchange standard acquisition procedures in construction (no standardized work flow) S Finally, all of the stakeholders have recognized the importance of data integration and standardization of process SOB Money, money, money! Page A9–28
B O BO B B B O O B B O O O B B/T
We’re trying to go forward. Construction is trying to go backward by building its own homegrown tool product. Explore life cycle issues once we get beyond construction. Hope for better structures long term. Lack of appropriate interoperability standards Lack of integration in the projects; disjointed set of projects Lack of knowledge of work done in the past; as if starting from square one Can’t do IT integration without a link to business processes Construction can’t go global without IT Could be developed and generalized to be useful in other domains (relevant to homeland security) Size of the IT gap in industry – just do it! Vs. This is a network of roadmaps. Work force issues could be turned into an opportunity to approach government Need for models of current processes, future processes, test beds to evaluate new solutions Need faculty and students crossing industry-academic border Opportunity to seek more interdisciplinary support for vision Possibly different vision between CEOs and IT personnel in FIATECH Representatives might not be fully engaged in vision development
Page A9–29
APPENDIX 10 Research Agenda Development
Page A10–1
Research Agenda Development This appendix contains the full set of contributions made by the participants in the charrette, to the development of the research agenda, as captured during the charrette. The material contained in this section was collected through Formal Input Sheets No. 4 submitted during the charrette. It also contains material collected through the facilitated plenary discussion held during Session 9 of the charrette. These comments have not been edited beyond basic spelling, grammar, and formatting modifications, and reflect ideas as originally presented by the contributors for discussion in the charrette. Consequently, some redundancy was unavoidable.
Consolidated Results from Charrette Formal Input Sheets •
Can we develop planning and design systems that support the innovative design/planning process while improving the quality and efficiency through technology-based solutions?
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What types of collaborative visualization environments are needed to support project planning that encourages improved input from all project participants?
•
What are the visualization and collaborative environments that allow us to improve engineering and architectural education?
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Can we improve the sustainability of project delivery and operation through improved planning tools and visualization/collaborative tools?
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How can we reengineer the process to improve performance and improve through use of technology?
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How to integrate the different problem-based approaches? Infrastructure – data fusion/management technology.
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How to coordinate different approaches?
•
What formalisms help in utilizing technologies and mapping them to the processes?
•
How do you increase value while retaining fun? Example – active decision support through collaboration and navigation of multi-dimensional solution spaces.
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How are you going to measure success? We used objective measures for measuring success, quantifying gains in productivity and documenting extent of savings and improvements in process.
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What factors affect technology adoption? How do you get a subcontractor to adopt technology without imposing it on them?
•
Interoperability vs. competitive advantage? Page A10–2
•
What are the information flows among roles in design? Construction? Facilities management? Who needs the information and why, at a lowest semantic level? What information impacts the data structures, the partition of software, the prioritization of problems, and an understanding of what information to save and what to throw away? First step to determining the value of the information.
•
What organization could take advantage of FIATECH? Existing industry will not work.
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How do you retain fun? What are the motivations of the people? New business model?
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How do we evaluate new technology (future technologies) with regard to cost/benefit in tangible and intangible dimensions?
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How to move from a vision to a feasible implementation/tactical plan that will provide additive research to such a complex problem?
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How to develop a new construction research methodology process that will allow us to measure/validate research results?
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What are the training and education needs for students, engineers, trade workers, foremen, etc. to be able to use the different components of the roadmap?
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How to evaluate the cost/benefit life cycle cost of various technologies?
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Construction management in a combat environment.
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How can conceptual design be computer-assisted? Front-end data loading, fuzzy project definition, intuitive support, etc.
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How can we support live collaboration between/among practitioners?
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How to establish appropriate mechanisms to facilitate the ‘live’ generation, capture, management, and re-use of knowledge (on projects) to ensure collaborative learning and avoid repetition of past mistakes?
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What are the fundamental issues in the appropriate deployment of technology?
•
How can we better support distributed collaboration for both routine projects and emergency response situations?
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What are the best ways to facilitate knowledge sharing within the construction community?
•
A project representation methodology that enables us to predict/measure the “flows” in project teams, and thus the positive effects of the infusion of new technologies. Page A10–3
Such a representation should reflect the tools, human networks, and organizational processes in one coherent model. Such a model should not just be able to measure effectiveness of communication and collaboration but deal with other units of flow, such as trust and enthusiasm. The big positive effect could be that we predict the effect of tools, matching expectations, and fulfillment. In short, we need much better theories to measure team effectiveness. •
What should a method look like to establish community-specific information requirements and data standards for research communities in the Cyberinfrastructure initiative? Merit – the issues of interdisciplinary interoperability haven’t been fleshed out. Impact – the construction industry could establish a prototype approach for an extremely fragmented, complex domain.
•
What are effective approaches for client-oriented requirements analysis to establish research directions for the construction industry? What will facilities of tomorrow really look like? Merit – efforts such as the FIATECH map are self-developed and inward looking. How can we better forecast the needs and constraints of our clients and align ourselves accordingly? Impact – we can leapfrog other industries and position ourselves for the future as service providers.
•
What are key decision points and motivations, from multiple stakeholder perspectives, and their relative influence on construction outcomes? What are the most effective ways to influence/motivate change in the industry? Merit – most research on change and innovation in the construction industry is intra-organizational. How do morphing project teams encourage/inhibit innovation? Impact – needed to facilitate positive and efficient change.
•
What are the global and local constraints that are likely to influence the industry long term, e.g., fossil fuel depletion, climate change, environmental constraints, etc.? How can the industry adjust to thrive under these conditions? Merit – existing efforts, e.g., the FIATECH roadmap, are inward looking and could result in the industry being blind-sided if we don’t keep our heads up. Full speed in the wrong direction… Impact – Again, we could leapfrog and be positioned to save the day when the future influences become a reality.
•
What are the most effective mechanisms for capturing and disseminating lessons learned in a way that influences future behavior, both within organizations, across organizations, across life cycle phases, and between construction and other industries with similarities? What REALLY works, given the science of teaching, learning, diffusion of innovation, organizational behavior, etc.? Merit – most efforts seem to be ad hoc. Need a comprehensive, theory-based evaluation of what works for the construction industry. Impact – could generalize to other, less messy industries.
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What about existing facilities?
Page A10–4
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What are the fundamentals from other disciplines that could create the ultimate effective engineer, e.g., computer science, social science, etc.? What’s the best way to deliver these within the context of the realities of an engineering education? Survey courses? Multi-disciplinary keystone projects, practicums, etc? Benchmark study is needed.
•
How to incorporate human factors in construction simulations?
•
How to overcome the pro-experience bias in the construction industry? What are the impacts of this bias? As a researcher, I see it as a barrier to innovation – is this a bias on my part? If experience proves to add benefits, how can we accelerate the internalization of experience in engineering students? What mechanisms are most effective? Conversely, if experience is a barrier to innovation, what’s the most effective way to influence experienced people to promote innovation?
•
What are the potential changes in professional roles that would be induced by the realization of the aspirations of the roadmap? Merit – understanding of aspects of professional roles in capital project delivery that can lend themselves to automation and can be substituted to achieve greater efficiency.
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What aspects of conceptual design can be supported by “hard tools” to speed up the process of arriving at a design solution? Merit – potential to transform the way the delivery of capital projects are organized in technology enabled environments.
•
Hierarchical knowledge and data representation at multiple levels of granularity in a coordinated ontology.
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Socio-technical theories of how people create project realities and productive collaborative temporary teams.
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Modeling of the process that connects owner needs (functional requirements) through concept design to design. Computer assistance for this process (effective).
•
New theories to accurately predict project cost for completed facilities from facility requirements and concept design phases.
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Developing phenomenology models from radio frequency, infrared, and other building signatures to establish realistic BIM for existing facilities.
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Meaning and implications of Building Information model on process, management, and innovation.
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How does technology (Cyberinfrastructure) impact and reshape the environmental agenda for the built environment? Equally, how do environmental initiatives shape Cyberinfrastructure, i.e., data gathering and use? How should this inform how we deliver projects?
Page A10–5
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How are design/project criteria handled, both initially and as they change through the design-construct-maintain process? What impacts (cost, schedule, quality, etc.) do these have on the desired outcome?
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What is the big connection between this new technology and the A/E/C firms’ objectives?
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What is the contribution of an individual project to a company’s bottom line?
•
What would support collaborative design? Tacit knowledge as well as data.
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Can we scale our vision to be leading edge in all respects such that we can fully participate with broader programs like CI?
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Are there fundamental shared middleware needs across communities such as medicine, manufacturing, and construction?
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Practical application of existing commercially available software to fully integrated all construction project management functions.
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What are the non-technical impediments to the integration of planning, design, construction, and operating information or data, and how can they be overcome?
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What is the “critical map” of the resources that go into the delivery of the project?
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How do we develop approaches, i.e., tools, technologies, etc., that account for different perspectives and advance life cycle quality of end products?
•
How do we develop approaches, e.g., tools, technologies, etc., that account for perspectives from owner/designer/builder/operator/user, different technology performance, and interactions between humans and computerized tools?
•
Multi-participant, multi-criteria, multi-objective problem solving environments that can be used for design, planning, and scheduling – need to be flexible to allow full constraint modeling and network-based interaction.
•
Challenges are problem representation – only engineers can do this; objective functions – again, engineers will do this; search engines – these could be generic.
•
Collaboration – using network technologies, can be used to support virtual organizations. These exist in construction to support relationship in a contract between designers, client, municipal authorities, contractor, sub-contractors, etc.
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How well does FIATECH’s roadmap match NSF’s Cyberinfrastructure aims? Not very well, I suspect.
Page A10–6
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Methods for justification of the investment needed – build a business case, include risks, and define metrics.
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Value of real true information.
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Risks
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The construction process depends a lot on trust between parties (e.g., contractor, supplier, subcontractors, etc.). How do you build trust in automated system with absence of people interactions?
•
Flexibility – how to maintain flexibility in the fully integrated environment?
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How to prepare 21st Century workforce?
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Automated facility condition assessment.
•
How can we understand the impact of an applied technology on the triple bottom line – social, environmental, and fiscal? Not all will have the same needs, wants, and outcomes.
•
Need to demonstrate the capability of the integration of the processes/systems/data flows. Need test beds; take the fear of failure away from the business processes.
•
In order to realize the FIATECH roadmap vision, it will be necessary to establish a geographically distributed, highly interdisciplinary, diverse research capability. Such a capability will require a Cyberinfrastructure for the exchange of data, the sharing of software tools, and the co-development of strategies and processes (both machine and human-based).
•
The research proposal to NSF perhaps should be to define and establish this research Cyberinfrastructure capability, which then evolves into the FIATECH Cyberinfrastructure as we incrementally achieve the goals of the roadmap.
•
How should processes be evolved and applied to support the technology roadmap/virtual organizations?
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What is the current research development and output that can support the roadmap?
•
Is technology ready, and what needs to be developed?
•
Matrix and key performance indicators.
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What is the benefit of this research to the construction industry compared to the IT industry, i.e., is there any benefit for the IT industry? If so, then we can ask the IT industry to participate and contribute to this research.
Page A10–7
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How can we measure the benefits of the investments, especially construction IT?
•
What are the fundamental changes needed in the way that the industry works, which will make integration technologies practical and attractive to all key participants? Business/management models? Business motivations?
•
Technologies to complete the data simulation modeling of project design management and production, and the interfaces between the model and all aspects of the actual project.
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Identifying/measuring the success and value of research products and efforts to industry.
•
Help focus resources and convince sponsors and end-users that the investment is worthwhile.
•
Data models (possibly IFC extension? collaborated with the IAI) for sub sectors of the A/E/C-FM industry. Impact – as listed in the FIATECH CPTR, standard data models are the enablers of all the nine elements. However, all industry sectors are suffering from funding data modeling efforts. Merit – each sector has different ontologies.
•
ALIS and asset life cycle information systems – definition, scope, and functions.
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Various productivity evaluation key indexes for nationwide data.
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Information flows/work processes.
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Research and development of underlying theories and methodologies that support the vision outlined in the FIATECH roadmap. Example: how to utilize field data to predict project performance/quality/cost based on sound engineering research? Merit – help the A/E/C industry better deliver the products/projects and services in terms of time/cost/quality/safety; advance the understanding and use of knowledge to benefit education, training, and practice of the A/E/C industry. Impact – industry/society/economy; new approaches to teach/learn/collaborate in a global economy.
•
Knowledge capture, representation, and management.
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Data modeling.
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New approaches to perform basic planning functions.
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Modeling and simulation.
Page A10–8
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How do we set up collaboration to simulate construction supply chains, with behavior/capacity/commitments, in a distributed environment over the Internet? If you can do that as academics, industry will be very interested.
•
If we think of control rooms in power plants, what would a control room for project delivery (cradle to grave) look like?
•
How do we tie the development of lean production theory into software needs/development of FIATECH tools?
Consolidated Results from Charrette Facilitated Plenary Discussion •
Develop solid theories and methodologies for developing models with the substantial amount of data that exists out there, which can be used to predict performance. These theories and methodologies would help define for researchers what type of data to collect, and how they can use the data they have.
•
What are the information flows associated with all the different work processes that are part of the roadmap? Definition of these information flows should include characterization of the information, and all inputs, processes, and outputs.
•
How do you increase the value of the technological infrastructure developed, while retaining an element of motivation and enjoyment in the use of that technology? This includes acknowledgement that, regardless of how good a tool is, the important issue to define is what makes someone want to use it, and then actually use it.
•
What are the various impacts of automation (e.g., to the organization; to innovation; to strategic planning; and to the way of doing business)?
•
What is the true business motivation for the implementation of the full spectrum of the roadmap, and what type of changes to the business model are required to make these technological developments attractive to both the organization and the people using them? This includes addressing the incompatibility between the technology and the people from the point of view of what they need to do and how they would like to do it.
•
The roadmap requires new technologies for evaluation of cost and benefit, especially from a life cycle cost perspective. This requires frameworks for evaluation that address both the tangible and intangible costs and benefits associated with technology.
•
The roadmap needs to define whether it is being process-led or technology-pushed, within the context of a business model and the processes and practices associated with that model. This is an issue of horse and wagon, where the wagon is a technology, and the horse are the people – where do the people want to take that technology?
Page A10–9
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There’s a fundamental question that needs to be answered: is the technology ready? This question highlights some of the weak points of the roadmap in terms of the need to strengthen the evaluation protocols for technology, including needs assessment and the various possible development paths (all evaluation protocols).
•
The link to project-based production system theory is not apparent, although certain elements in the roadmap certainly are integral to this theory.
•
“Don’t automate – obliterate!” Mike Hammer.
•
There is an opportunity to establish the research Cyberinfrastructure that is needed to realize the full FIATECH CPTR vision, particularly Cyberinfrastructure that can be rapidly deployed in the field, not just the one that is available at the office.
•
What is the international or global dimension of the roadmap? The roadmap, in its current form, neither captures nor reflects the global dimension of the capital project industry.
•
Another research area is the identification of non-technical impediments to the integration of life cycle data generated by different sources. This includes the application of socio-technical theories of how people create project realities and productive temporal teams.
•
All these systems have a high level of complexity and consequently, there is a special need to develop interfaces that allow the technology to be used intuitively, with high levels of accessibility and speed.
•
There is an opportunity to connect the CPTR initiative to other initiatives that are already out there, especially those that have a track record of attracting significant investment in research, such as the environmental community. The corollary is 0 how does the environmental initiative help shape the CPTR, and how could we use data and information generated within the roadmap to improve the delivery of projects? How do we integrate environmental initiative with the roadmap initiative and create a synergy between the two?
•
What is the equivalent of Moore’s Law for the roadmap? Do we know what we are after, and are there any metrics to know if we’re getting there?
•
There’s a need to identify the natural principles that are intrinsic to the A/E/C industry that we may currently not be seeing. There’s a need to link the roadmap with a more rigorous process of observation, formulation, prediction, and validation as foundational theories.
•
Another opportunity is how can we look outside the A/E/C community regarding the roadmap so that we are not only inward-looking but rather emphasize what do we have to offer that can be generalized to other contexts and domains?
Page A10–10
•
There is a tremendous need to focus on the learning associated with the roadmap, particularly emphasizing that this is not just learning from others, but also from us. Currently, there appears to be too much reinvention of the wheel, and as such, there should be an emphasis on mechanisms for knowledge sharing such as the one proposed under the Cyberinfrastructure initiative, which would enable the generation, capture, management, and use of knowledge.
•
How can we predict the effectiveness of teams within the integrated context of the roadmap, particularly as it relates to unit of flow of trust and fun? How can we get to a theory that predicts this for both virtual and physical teams?
•
What about the link with the theory of language action, which goes against command and control?
•
What are the professional role changes required by the roadmap? There’s a need to redefine them; for example, architects as concept guardians.
•
If the roadmap is applied to the industry in its full spectrum of possibilities, what are the implications for all existing buildings, including how to get the data and develop those models? There’s still a void between new and existing buildings.
•
Education and training needs for new engineers and other professionals are areas that need to be explored in more depth and with more rigor.
•
Another research area has to do with the possibility of graduating students that have the equivalent knowledge and expertise to compete with those that have 10 years of industry experience. In other words, how can you accelerate the competitiveness of the new work force that is being educated and trained? Industry practitioners are still working with old things. We are generating graduates that can learn things faster. Without a formal approach to education as an integral part of the roadmap, an opportunity is missed to accelerate the use of technology in the professional workforce. A student highly educated on the roadmap could reach levels of productivity and competitiveness relatively fast that would be comparable to the levels of productivity and competitiveness of someone who has been in the workforce much longer.
•
There’s an opportunity to learn from efforts in attempting to integrate content and materials across courses in a curriculum. Studying these efforts can be a good point of reference for the challenges for trying to integrate so many things in the roadmap.
•
What is the next generation of modeling and simulation methodologies that are required within the context of the roadmap? This leads to the need to identify changes in some of the fundamental functions, such as scheduling, estimating, and project management.
Page A10–11
•
The roadmap offers an opportunity for educators not to try to compete with industry or try to teach just programming skills, but rather, expose them to the fundamentals of computer science theory so that they are able to understand what is coming in the future. The university experience should provide them with exposure to what they cannot get out in practice.
•
The roadmap offers great opportunities for the development of virtual opportunities for students in the total pipeline, from K-12 to undergraduate, graduate, and professional. At the core of these experiences are scenarios developed by industry of actual industry problems. It is important to understand the role of experience from the point of view that in an academic setting, you begin with a theory and then expand to testing and simulation, both physical and virtual. This provides experience that otherwise could not be gained by those in their formative years. In addition to the virtual types of experiments and simulations, you must also have a component based on reality. The challenge is, how do you capture the reality and bring it in to be used in teaching?
•
The question of how do you develop leadership within this technology roadmap, particularly differentiating between skills and competencies, and the ability to understand issues affecting them. How do you develop technological leadership? Time telling vs. clock building.
•
Experience gives the ability to use knowledge; it’s not about knowledge accumulation.
•
Industry has a lot of dinosaurs, and you’re going to be sending highly educated new professionals who are going to hit the wall. How do you change prevailing paradigms and mentalities in industry?
•
Another research arena is on methodologies to prove industry value of the roadmap. Show the proof that the roadmap actually stands for something of value.
•
What is the long-term plan of tool and software development? In other words, what is a sustainable model for technological development?
•
Teams – how do they function, and what are the communication technologies that enable the transfer of knowledge? Two components of core knowledge management include information management and the community of practice that will be using the knowledge.
•
There’s a need to expedite the process to set up the research facilities and infrastructure to support eh research required by the vision. What are some of the new institutional models required to expedite this vision?
•
Another interesting area of research is project-to-project learning. We’re talking business-to-business learning, project-to-project learning, and peer-to-peer learning.
Page A10–12
•
In its current form, the roadmap places a very large emphasis on the development of new applications, but it’s not clear what is the emphasis on new technology development?
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APPENDIX 11 Commitments
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Commitments This appendix contains the full set of commitments made by the participants in the charrette in support of the implementation of the research agenda, as captured during the charrette. The material contained in this section was collected through the facilitated plenary discussion held during Session 9 of the charrette. These comments have not been edited beyond basic spelling, grammar, and formatting modifications, and reflect ideas as originally presented by the contributors for discussion in the charrette. Consequently, some redundancy was unavoidable.
Consolidated Results from Charrette Facilitated Plenary Discussion Name
Commitment
Burcu Akinci
I’m committed to work in close contact with industry, collaborate with academics in other universities, and continue to work with Element 4.
Chimay J Anumba
1) To work in collaboration with one or two US colleagues to develop and submit a joint research proposal. 2) To explore the possibility of an EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK) initiative to link into the NSF-FIATECH initiative.
Godfried Augenbroe
I’m going to write a white paper on “team effectiveness” fueled by many of the ideas that I heard at this meeting, to be uploaded on the web site to see who agrees with the views on where we should go next.
Claude Bédard
Further knowledge of and collaboration of Canadian research initiatives to further initiatives compatible with FIATECH CPTR.
Hans Bjornsson
1) Obtain funds in Sweden for a collaborative project relevant for the roadmap. 2) Collect information on state-of-the-art in Europe and submit for summary report (maybe limited to element #3).
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Name Carlos H. Caldas
Commitment 1) Discuss and incorporate FIATECHrelated issues in the courses that I am teaching. 2) Participate in FIATECH activities and help better define the role of academics in the implementation of the roadmap. 3) Write proposals to address some of the research issues discussed, especially related to items 4 and 6.
Luh-Maan Chang
I would like to do collaborative research on Element 5 in the area of facility condition assessment and Element 8 in enabled workforce.
Allan D. Chasey
Will continue to work/develop Element 5 on the roadmap. Can help move Element 8 forward.
Lawrence Chiarelli
I hereby agree, as follows: •
Mark J. Clayton
To identify at least one student project in furtherance of a vision, element, or project of the roadmap, and share the results of that effort.
I will: 1) include those here in the effort to add built environment to the NRC research taxonomy. 2) Visit NSF, NIST, NIH, GSA, and university lobbyists to tell our story. 3) Co-author position papers and journal articles. 4) Communicate our vision to our industry advisory board.
Francis T Edum-Fotwe
Develop cross-Atlantic collaboration to explore some of the issues from the roadmap – potential cross-Atlantic academic exchange. Will keep in touch with whoever would be happy to – keep the spirit alive.
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Name
Commitment
Ian Flood
Put a collaborative effort together to seek funding for one of the roadmap tasks.
Thomas Froese
I will start to use the FIATECH roadmap prominently as a point of reference in my presentations and research proposals.
James H. Garrett
•
Work with Jorge and Bill to continue to unite and organize this community.
•
Committed to work with Rick to determine a way to sustainably join FIATECH.
•
Commit to continue to generate recognition and use of FIATECH roadmap.
•
Commit to get Element 4 expressed as a set of needed functionalities.
Francois Grobler
1) Participate in post-charrette discussions and work on getting the “real” NSF research agenda constructed. Urge everyone else to do it also. 2) Commit to actively participate in this community of expertise, and contribute to news and website content. 3) Write white paper on BIM standard.
Karen Lee Hansen
I would be willing to continue participation: •
Will communicate with academic peers, professional associates, and students.
•
Write a collaborative research proposal with one or more conference attendees focusing on Elements 1 or 2.
•
Continue with communication.
•
Write paper on collaborative design and management of design requirements.
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Name Vineet Kamat
Commitment 1) I will try to convince my university to become a member of FIATECH. 2) I will talk to all industry partners in my research group and spread the word about FIATECH. 3) I will always try to align my research goals with FIATECH’s vision. 4) I will volunteer to work in developing the elements.
Kincho Henry Law
Participation in future workshops with respect to FIATECH and research (Cyberinfrastructure).
Ghang Lee
I commit to contribute to/review Element 2: Automated Design (and Element 1: Scenario-based Project Planning if time allows) tacit plan.
Liang Y. Liu
•
Distribute and share what I know and learn to people/companies/students.
•
Continue to contribute/participate/ collaborate with others in efforts related to Elements #4 and #6.
•
Help organize a meeting related to FIATECH in Cancun, July 2005.
John I. Messner
Community of practice on use of VR and simulation for education -> using it to improve education.
John Miles
Collaborative research projects on design and collaboration; further intellectual input; approach decision makers in UK and Europe and tell them about roadmap.
William O’Brien
Work to continue developing a formal academic critique and vision to further the FCPTR and transformation of our industry.
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Name
Commitment
Ian Parmee
Continued commitment to establishment of a globally distributed capability to help realize the FIATECH vision, exploring European and UK support, and contributing via associated UK networks and clusters, e.g., EPSRC cluster, Designing for 21st Century cluster, and Discovery in Design – people-centered issues.
Annie R. Pearce
I will review/help draft the research agenda to ensure that the human factors and sustainability sides are covered, and I would like to get involved in updating some of the roadmap elements as funding permits.
Hugues Rivard
•
I am interested in participating in Element 2 of the roadmap.
•
Will organize an international conference in the summer of 2006 in Montreal.
Boong-Yeol Ryoo
I am developing a virtual research network and a virtual knowledge network (they are web-based systems). I think I can let you use the systems to communicate with colleagues and share information.
Sam Salem
•
Collaborative efforts for research proposals.
•
Participate in future charrette meetings.
•
Provide reviews and inputs for research proposals, as much as my time permits.
•
Commit a student for roadmap-related research.
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Name Ian F.C. Smith
Commitment 1) Partially answer the question: how can engineers have fun using it in the A/E/C industry? 2) Contribute to teaching fundamental computer science to engineering students to make them able to accommodate future (unknown) developments. 3) Meeting in Ascona, July 2006.
Lucio Soibelman
Help the development of a session to present the results of this workshop during the Computing in Civil Engineering in July 2005. I will continue to work on improving Element 4.
Iris D. Tommelein
Assuming you want it, I will help to develop a write-up for the final report for this charrette on the need to develop and the role of a theory of production for construction.
Jorge A. Vanegas
1) Organize a Latin American Summit on the F/CPTR at the City of Knowledge in Panama. 2) Present a paper on the results of the charrette at the ASCE Construction Congress and the ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering Congress in 2005 3) Continue providing logistic support to the charrette web site to maintain the momentum gained
Ron R. Wakefield
1) Provide a conduit for Australian involvement in this effort. Coordinate participation, seek funding, and help seek buy-in to the research agenda. 2) Attempt to bring the housing industry to the table and share experiences with roadmap research.
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Name No name Submitted
Commitment •
Utilize contacts made here to pursue research and education agenda concerning roadmap and environment.
•
Identify funding sources and pursue a collaborative research proposal/publication.
No name Submitted
Participate/contribute in follow-up activities, e.g., sub-groups on some specific subjects for research/education.
No name Submitted
•
Development of simulation models of site operations (element #4) with emphasis on 4D visualization. New theories need to be developed and observed.
•
Market part of the roadmap to companies in the UK.
•
VR-NET workshop focused on capital projects.
•
Continue work with Bill on supply chain issues (element #3).
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APPENDIX 12 Opportunities for Collaboration
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Opportunities for Collaboration This appendix contains the full set of opportunities for collaboration proposed by the participants in the charrette in support of the implementation of the research agenda, as captured during the charrette. The material contained in this section was collected through the facilitated plenary discussion held during Session 10 of the charrette. These comments have not been edited beyond basic spelling, grammar, and formatting modifications, and reflect ideas as originally presented by the contributors for discussion in the charrette. Consequently, some redundancy was unavoidable.
Goal: Continue with the strategy to generate ideas for how we might collaborate. What could we do to further the synergy and excitement we’ve had the past few days? Consolidated Results from Brainstorming Session on Mechanisms for Collaboration •
Set up a database of everyone’s research interests within the FIATECH roadmap.
•
Given Cyberinfrastructure and need for community, we need to find a venue where we can exist as a community, or lacking that, create one. What does this mean? Do we need a new organization, a confederacy? Does ASCE already serve this role? Maybe we can have a committee under FIATECH – the Research and Education committee under this umbrella, similar to CII’s unofficial gathering/academic workshop. Have a standing committee that people populate.
•
Another model from John Miles is something under ASCE – the Construction Institute and the data and information DIM and the intelligent computing group.
•
What would be the desired outcomes of the community? Once we know this, we can pick the right venue. There should be a formal vision or statement of the group with some details behind it.
•
It would be nice to have some of you be guest lecturers in my classes. We could use NetMeeting and not have to leave our offices. It’s very effective. You can use PowerPoint and draw sketches, answer questions, etc.
•
Sharing data with industry – we can also share data among ourselves, e.g., sharing CAD models or construction schedules for research and study. How would we do this? Would it require a centralized web site? This would probably be the best way. You’d need people to volunteer data to share. Once it’s identified, then we can put it on a web site. It could also remain distributed and just be connected via links to other site. Someone needs to keep track of evolving data sets, e.g., supply chains in construction. If this is being automated somehow, then others can take advantage of
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it. Creating a centralized clearinghouse of web links. The motivation is pure collaboration. •
Where else could this be located? It could be within the scope of this new organization we’ve been discussing, or off FIATECH, or off Jorge’s web site.
•
This is not the only construction community trying to reestablish a sense of community. Bill, Eddie Rojas, and others are working to establish a construction marketing group out of CRC. There is a desire among many people to recreate/reconstitute a construction research community. It relates directly.
•
Let’s have one organization serving both needs. Where overlaps are possible, let’s use them.
•
Add this to the CRC meeting agenda in Baltimore next week as a discussion point.
•
At what point do we start bringing in people from computer science, materials science, chemistry, etc.? I envision this being way beyond where I could ever be as an individual.
•
How could we bring these people in? How to engage other disciplines? Include them in proposals – this is always an effective way to create an interdisciplinary group. Fund it and they will come. If FIATECH could put together money, it would draw multiple communities together.
•
There’s a need to educate other disciplines on the roadmap and get their inputs as well. Another workshop, perhaps? We tried to invite people who are more diverse, but it was hard to get them to come to meetings like this and participate actively.
•
We just put a proposal in for a construction safety research center. If you identify a $25 million funding opportunity, people are begging you to work with you. When you don’t have money, no one will talk to you.
•
Creative ways to engage other disciplines. At the dissertation level, you can find basic scientists who are looking for application areas, e.g., computer science. People may be interested in application areas that you can provide. Not everyone is interested in this, but some people are. It can evolve into PhD programs and many other opportunities.
•
Serving on PhD committees.
•
Collaboration has to be about trust on a personal level and getting along with people it has to be addressed on that level. You don’t want to get stuck in a three-year project with a bunch of weirdos. Personality is important! Chemistry is important. Collaboration is driven by chemistry and attitude.
•
Events like this one are ways to meet new people. Page A12–3
•
If we think outside our own application domain, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved in other teams based on our project management expertise, availability of test beds, development of middleware around our end application, etc. Look for ways to join other projects in other disciplines. Try to be “end application”.
•
Modes of collaboration in the UK, particularly the academic-industry interface.
•
Industry-based doctoral program – researchers actively engaged in research that is part of an industrial base. Part of the engineering doctorate program.
•
FIATECH companies could actively host doctoral research.
•
Industry-based means an element of scientific research driven by an industry need, e.g., the FIATECH roadmap. The company provides researcher with access to case studies and projects and actively participates in the project.
•
At the MS level, there are knowledge-transfer projects. These intend to do the same thing at the knowledge transfer level rather than generating new knowledge. This is two-way – knowledge is brought back to the university as well.
•
Industrial-academic exchange program for faculty and industry personnel.
•
Industrial steering committee for research projects – it provides grounding for the castles we’re building in the air. It also introduces industry to the value added of the research process.
•
For academic collaboration, there are joint research proposals.
•
Making available information about international funding could support collaboration. Finding parallel funding in two countries, e.g., between NSF and EPSRC is a great opportunity, but rarely happens on its own. The US part is harder than the other countries. We wish an NSF guy were here to discuss more. Travel funding is pretty easy to get. Organizing an international workshop is also fairly easy. But really doing international collaborative research is pretty difficult – funding is much harder to find, and sometimes you can’t live up to your commitments. If one party gets funding and the other doesn’t, people can get in trouble. The review processes in different countries are different. The perspective of what is meant by research differs greatly.
•
Is there a way that we could lobby these funding organizations to improve the performance of initiatives like this? Maybe joint review committees? For serious collaborations, we need to approach both parties with the strength of FIATECH behind us.
•
Visiting fellowships/professorships are available as well.
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•
Can we set up a videoconference to discuss continued dialogue on the topics covered in this workshop? We could also involve students through seminar participation in the video conferencing.
•
Could we have ongoing discussion through chat rooms or threaded discussions set up for this meeting? The video bandwidth might not be needed, but these other modes are already set up. We could then have follow-on meetings as well.
•
We will need virtual collaborations and other opportunities to meet, e.g., at conferences. If other groups are prepared to “take up the charge” to continue this effort, they can manage these interactions, keep people up to date on FIATECH’s vision, set up group meetings at conferences, set up sub-committees to look at separate issues, etc.
•
It could be akin to mob activities – “we’re all going to meet at Montreal…”
•
Are we looking for ways to continue collaboration around these themes? Yes. It doesn’t have to be all of them but at least some.
•
A clearly articulated reason for why we want to do this and what we expect to get out of it would be helpful. One reason (of interest to FIATECH) is to encourage more interaction around the roadmap, e.g., ways to improve it, what to do with it, etc. FIATECH wants academics to be very active – argue with me!
•
Some people might not be able to sustain an intense commitment, e.g., a dedicated meeting every 3 months. We need to find opportunities to double-dip with events where people are already attending. The meetings must have a clear objective.
•
Is there any continuing education that FIATECH might be interested in that we could deliver? Yes – there’s a lot you already do. With respect to the roadmap? Yes – for each of the elements, the vision, the structure, etc. There was recently a request for continuing education credits for the FIATECH conference – let’s find ways to do this.
•
Why would this group want to get together in the future? Let’s be honest. What’s our desired outcome?
•
We have to answer the question of how FIATECH is going to encourage academic involvement without paying a fee. Academic institutions aren’t interested in doing that.
•
Would like to share course, curriculum, and teaching information among participants, including resources, particularly for mentoring new programs.
•
FIATECH could find a way to support continuing education courses, particularly for technical topics, and charging a small fee that would support a faculty member to come to the conference in exchange for giving a short workshop.
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•
Paying full fees to be involved in FIATECH is too daunting and unreasonable for academics. We are contributing our time and travel budgets and ideas – isn’t this enough? Could an arrangement be made with FIATECH to substitute this for a monetary commitment? If academics are important, they should consider this problem. When you do things for free, people think you’re worthless.
•
Motivation – I’d like to have data. As a provider, why should I share my data with others? I’d like evaluation, but that might not be enough. Getting research projects is probably the best motivation – joint projects, industry funding, etc. There are two types of research projects – applied projects and theory-oriented projects. NSF is not interested in application-oriented projects. There are two ways to fund those – FIATECH could collect $ from industry and distribute like NSF, or FIATECH could act as a bridge between industry and academic – make partnerships, host events to make parties aware of opportunities and initiatives. This event was a good example of a way to make academia aware of what industry wants. FIATECH could do both, for that matter – opportunity brokering and direct funding.
•
The GOALI program would be a good match with FIATECH. There are lots of academic programs that would fit.
•
How much is the research budget for the main contractors and clients that are part of FIATECH? What are the research budgets for people who stand to benefit from FIATECH? Companies jointly fund projects identified through FIATECH at a level dependent on the scope of the project.
•
Let’s talk one more time about a vision for continuing this collaboration. What would our mission be?
•
We want the roadmap to be a dynamic document. We’re going to want to think about it and continue to improve it. Keep the roadmap fresh.
•
From a UK standpoint, we would like to understand how to move this forward. Many of the member companies of FIATECH are international, so there is a reason to participate with them in other countries. This is a positive short-term way to move forward for international participants.
•
We want to integrate academic theory and research involvement in the roadmap, which is not presently the case. That’s why we came here.
•
Can this group only do this, or are there other ways? ASCE committees? CRC?
•
There are many roadmapping efforts in the world. We want to reassert ownership of these more than we have. We also want to establish lobbying ability to approach funders as a community and have a stronger voice.
•
Not many roadmaps have been as inclusive as this one.
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•
An ability to share our test beds and databases in an academic format. It will also allow us to get some credit for the work we’ve done, too. Proving that others are using your work is a strong asset when going after funding.
•
The descriptive research we do could benefit from application, too.
•
The roadmap has acted as an organizing framework for our participation. We didn’t all just come here and present our individual work. Doing workshops coincident with other opportunities, e.g., conferences, would help avoid the onerous responsibilities of conference creation, etc.
•
A parallel effort, conducted under the Building Futures Council of AGC, is a conference in Las Vegas next year. The goal is to integrate academia with industry, and possibly generate some industry-sponsored projects out of this. The goal is to know what’s going on across the US.
•
When you look across the life cycle, there are still a lot of people we’ve not talked to. Facilities management, design, planning, ME’s, Electric distribution industry, etc. There are a lot of other disciplines that have to get involved beyond CE’s and construction.
•
Outreach to other disciplines is an important component under the roadmap concept. It’s a problem important to FIATECH and academia both.
•
Is this enough to comprise a compelling reason to continue? If so, we can work on mechanism.
•
Would we like to get together in the future?
•
Part of that will depend on what happens next with the roadmap and what ultimately comes out of this workshop. If it has no impact on how element groups proceed, then maybe not.
•
Would it be of value to take this to NSF as an idea for how to develop the construction community and how we’d like to interact with/benefit from the Cyberinfrastructure initiative. It would be a reason to go to the next level of community and define how we want to work together. It could be a motivation. We could have a smaller workshop similar to this one focused on this issue.
•
It makes sense – that was the basis for this whole meeting in the first place. I think this should be a minimum outcome of this meeting – to go after some of that money from NSF.
•
We need the Cyberinfrastructure to develop the research environment to implement the roadmap and other ideas.
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•
We need to have a meeting to define what CI means for this community and delivering a vision – a much more focused effort that would result in a white paper. We could also have presentations from communities who are already benefiting from CI as a point of departure. The UK has a lot of experience doing this already. The next workshop could be there. Prototypes are already in place. They’re two years down that road.
•
Focused effort in this direction sounds like a good idea. Jim, Kincho, and any other interested people could draft a paper that we could then critique as a basis for moving forward.
•
An east coast venue would be helpful to those participating from the EU. Barbados, perhaps?
•
A target for this group ought to be the Cancun meeting. The timing is definitely right! This will be a good conference.
•
The momentum is here, the chemistry is here – everything’s in place to keep this moving forward.
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