Collaboration is key for successful delivery of building projects in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector. Innovative project delivery approaches developed over the past two ...decades envision new ways of collaborating and specifically aim at improving the performance of and value generated by this key economic sector. Collaboration, however, remains an ill-defined and highly amorphous concept. This makes it difficult to investigate and consequently develop a body of knowledge, which is central to defining a field of expertise in this area. The aim of this investigation is to explore the notion of an expertise in collaboration in the AEC sector and the implications of these innovative project delivery approaches on this expertise. The concept of collaboration is developed across five core entities: structure, process, agents, artefacts and context. These entities are then framed through a critical realist lens to lay the groundwork for a body of knowledge of collaboration in the AEC sector. The impact of the current shift to these innovative approaches is investigated within this framing. The findings set a course of action to develop a body of knowledge and a field of expertise on collaboration in the AEC sector.
The results of an exploratory case study dedicated to a BIM project are presented and the perception that professionals have of their practices and the BIM collaboration processes is discussed in ...this study. It suggests that the roles of BIM specialists are not the same from one discipline to another and that they are not just technical roles. In addition, the information subprocess seems to crystallize around BIM managers, which tends to create two sources of leadership in a project: BIM managers and project managers. Finally, the study shows a gap between the planned processes and those actually used in the project. The use of a big room, to bring together the owner and the other disciplines, seems to be particularly useful. It serves as an integrator, and information is better shared.
In recent decades, municipalities around the world have been developing community policies and seeking to apply them in their cities. They use methods for exchanging information and opinions on ...decisions, policies, plans and strategies and involve and consult with the community and stakeholders in all aspects of the decision-making process. The application of methods for thoughtful planning has become the goal of policy makers to improve the lives of citizens and stop the expansion of the city into the countryside. The aim of this article is to integrate the notion of sustainability into a methodological approach, taking into account the actors involved in the decision-making phases, the objectives, and the local indicators in an urban redevelopment project (brownfield). Our approach is based on an analysis of 21 articles and on a transversal and cross-cutting view of the interdisciplinary themes of sustainable development by inserting the main actors into decision-making in urban projects and by selecting local indicators. We put in place a methodological approach for the evaluation of urban projects that takes into account local expectations. The goal is to identify and classify the elements that are needed for decision making, including the indicators related to environmental and socio-economic components, in order to develop an effective evaluation tool. This research contributes to the knowledge of project evaluation tools in the specific context of a city.
Since its introduction, Building Information Modelling has evolved into a major technology in the construction industry, where information flows play a major role. However, the very presence of waste ...within these flows prevents the technology from reaching its full potential. This paper aims to develop a taxonomy focused on the sources of waste within information flows in BIM projects, as existing taxonomies focus primarily on work and material flows. Using a collaborative design science research approach, the study was divided into two phases: first, semi-structured interviews were used to collect data on BIM practices. The data was then used to identify similarities and contradictions in the information flows using process maps. Second, the ShareLab approach was used to validate the findings through a common agreement. The paper’s main contribution is the taxonomy of sources of waste in BIM project information flows, as it closes knowledge gaps in one of the main flows of construction projects. Another contribution is its use of a new approach to validate an artefact in a Design Science Research methodology named the ShareLab approach.
Current concerns focus on the need to reduce energy consumption in construction and over the lifespan of buildings. A major objective is to create affordable housing. However, reducing the energy ...needs of the present without harming the needs of future generations remains difficult to put into practice, especially at the level of habitats in arid zones. In this research, a housing design assistance process for building designers is proposed, with the aim of converging towards a global optimum for the correlation and integration of vernacular devices and strategies in an optimized way. This will allow the integration of energy performance indicators and user comfort, in order to ultimately optimize, for this case study, the morphogenesis of residential buildings based on the morphological structure of a proposed building in Biskra, Algeria. This last developed process is articulated on various combinations distinguished for the case of the integration of devices and strategies, which allow maximum energy saving while ensuring the comfort of the occupants. As part of this research, this integration constituted a major challenge and made it possible to achieve a reduction in energy ratio of up to 25.11% compared to the standard building and the objectives of the research.
The construction industry is currently undergoing significant change as a result of digital technologies. Among the technological approaches, the Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach has ...received considerable attention in recent years from both researchers and industry professionals, and its growing success seems to have opened the door to major paradigm shifts in the industry. Faced with these changes, the traditional skills of project professionals or managers no longer seem sufficient to manage the new information perspective of construction project management. New skills become necessary, embodied by new roles (BIM managers, BIM coordinators, BIM modeler, information managers, etc.) that are becoming increasingly important in projects. Some studies have studied these new roles on a theoretical level, without addressing the question of their positioning in relation to traditional roles in project management, nor how project managers and BIM specialists position themselves in relation to the generic processes proposed in the BIM implementation guides. This case study shows that the roles of BIM specialists are not the same from one discipline to another, and that these roles are not just technical roles. In addition, the information sub-process seems to crystallize around BIM managers, which tends to create two sources of leadership in a project: BIM managers and project managers. The study also reveals that practitioners find that the BIM collaboration processes proposed in the BIM implementation plan and in the project documents are too generic and that there is generally a gap between these processes and those actually used in the project.
The reuse of brownfields is becoming a necessary option to meet the current requirements of urban densification and for the preservation of agricultural land, as well as for improvement in the ...quality of life. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the main objectives and benefits of a rehabilitation project implemented in Canada. The rehabilitation of the brownfield site Lachine-Turcot-Petite Bourgogne in Montréal was analyzed according to four indicators (revenue, average cost of rent, rental usage, and home resale price). The findings of the study demonstrate that the expectations (socio-economic benefits derived from Southwest borough—City of Montréal) of the local community were not respected and that the initial objectives of the project changed during its implementation. In particular, the average rent increased considerably after four years, by 165.47% in the period 2001–2006. The percentage of resident homeowners increased from 89% to about 95% in 10 years, and in the 1996–2014 period the total income per household increased from about $25,000 to about $78,000. We propose an evaluation tool that integrates an ontology of the elements necessary for decision-making and local indicators related to the environmental and socio-economic components with the goal of meeting the expectations of the local community.
The use of tools to measure the degree of sustainability of cities is the approach that receives the most attention in developed countries. However, studies of evaluation tools at the neighborhood ...level reveal that there are many weaknesses in the most widely-used evaluation systems (LEED-ND, BREEAM Communities, CASBEE-UD). There are ambiguities and gaps in weighting and in scoring and in most cases, there is no mechanism for local adaptability and participation. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the current situation by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of these evaluation tools in order to integrate social and economic aspects for the improvement of the CASBEE-UD (neighborhood level) evaluation tool. The selection of socio-economic aspects was made through the use of a multi criteria Analysis Hierarchical Process (AHP) and a Geographic Integration System (GIS). The results of this case study indicate that most evaluation tools need to be revised because most do not include socio-economic aspects. We have demonstrated that applying the CASBEE-UD assessment tool integrated with socio-economic aspects to four boroughs in the City of Montreal can measure success by addressing the objectives of sustainable development.
Request for information (RFI) is a formal process used in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry to address design flaws that affect communication between designers and contractors. ...A large number of RFIs are a sign of a lack of precision or coordination in the design documents. However, RFIs produce rich, precise, and structured information. Analyzing their content can help to identify recurring problems between designers and construction teams and better tailor future projects to the working context of the contractors. This article presents a method for identifying recurring issues during the design phase of steel construction projects through the analysis of the contents of RFIs. It is original in using a qualitative content analysis tool that can analyze large quantities of RFIs rapidly. Identifying the recurrent problems of contractors will allow the establishment of rules to be taken into consideration during the design phase of future steel construction projects. A case study of 26 steel construction projects demonstrates the feasibility of this method. This case study shows that, given the same designers and construction teams, recurring problems shown in RFIs do not differ according to the scale of the projects. In this case, the main issue between designers and contractors is the lack and inadequate presentation of information related to the connection of steel components. Identifying these problems can pave the way for initiatives to improve the design phase and can be an essential step in making contractors’ knowledge available to designers early in the projects.
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