Integration of practices and technologies in construction.

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The construction industry performs poorly compared to other industries. The two problems identified in numerous studies are 1) the poor value of the end product in terms of quality, the lack of fit for purpose and sustainability; and 2) for the delivery of this product, the poor productivity/predictability (cost and schedule). The core issues identified in research related to these problems are the high multilevel fragmentation, and the linear design and construction process. The cost of the lack of performance from this fragmented and linear process varies from study to study between 30 to 50% of the total project cost. The solutions proposed by research and industry are the integration of: the design process, teams or practices, or of information through information technology. This integration requires however moving from linear and fragmented to integrated and iterative processes, from craftsmanship to agile organization of work, from the management of work packages, activities and tasks to the management of workflows and dataflows. The challenges are multidimensional, complex and systemic; addressing and balancing technological, semantic and organizational issues of interoperability within the project network. This research program aims to study two specific instances of information generation and exchange within the project supply chain using Building Information Modeling (BIM) – a set of interacting policies, processes and technologies for the generation and management of digital representations of a facility. These two instances are seen as critical interfaces in the overall project lifecycle. The first instance is the interface between the owner and the consulting team. It has been reported that Owners have the most potential to benefit from the deployment of BIM [1], and have the most influence in deploying BIM within project settings [2] . However, there seems to be an overall lack of initiative and leadership on the part of the Owners to mandate BIM on their projects and implement BIM as a long-term solution within their organizations. There is evidence that the deployment of BIM in a project setting involves a complete overhaul of the current contractual arrangements between owners and suppliers [3] . It also requires a re-configuration of business practices for the organizations involved in the project lifecycle [4]. The challenges for owners contemplating mandating BIM are considerable: an unready market, training costs and the learning curve, the necessity for the full participation of the project team, too many legal barriers, issues with model ownership, and a lack of standardization [5]. The research aims to study how information is generated and exchanged at this critical interface in light of these aforementioned barriers. The second instance is within the consulting team, more precisely the energy analysis process or the interface between architect and mechanical engineer. Some work has looked into the technological aspects of performing energy analysis [6, 7]. However, the procedural aspects of energy modeling in a BIM environment have been sparsely documented. Through the broader lens of interoperability, the iterative process of information generation and exchange that characterizes the energy analysis process can be thoroughly analyzed.