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CE733
IT in Construction
CE733
In this course we will look at Information
Technology and information systems from
a viewpoint of
a) the construction sector
b) management
Information Revolution
• Driving Force behind:
Convergence of computing and
telecommunication technology.
• Information Society:
Emerged all around the world within
a single generation.
• IT has enabled the globalisation of the
economy and competition, and caused
large-scale changes in many industries
• IT is also bringing a major shift in the job
market; resulting in a more polarised
occupational structure, consisting of highly
skilled/well paid jobs at one end and lower
skilled/low wages at the other. For the
modern work force, IT literacy is becoming
an essential requirement.
Computer use
Communication: Basic need for most human activities
Tarditional- telephone, fax, mail...
In the new information era- e-mail, internet, video conferencing
The new communication technology enables people
located in different places to work together as if they
were in the same office. Big multinational companies
are already exploiting this technology to achieve better
use of the resources of their seperate offices. In this
way projects can be shared between officeswith the
application of the best expertise, and around the clock
On-line services: The rapid development of the Internet
and the World Wide Web has enabled many services tthat
traditionally required face to face meetings to be delivered
on-line.
Internet distance learning: opportunities of university
education, widening access to higher education (delivering
teaching and learning to people who cannot attend
lectures)-increases a country’s competitiveness in a global
market.
E-business: Internet provides a virtual market place for
buyers, suppliers, distributors and sellers to exchange
information, negotiate and trade. More market
opportunities, more competition.
Teleworking: Flexibility in working conditions, less office
space, more productive workers.
Information Systems
The layers in Figure below illustrate why the term
information system must be defined along with the terms
information technology and business process.
• Information technology is the hardware and software that
make information systems possible.
• An information system is a system that uses information
technology to capture, transmit, store, retrieve, manipulate,
or display information used in one or more business
processes.
• Firms consist of groups of business processes and compete
in a business environment.
• A business process is a related group of steps or activities
that use people, information, and other resources to create
value for internal or external customers.
• The business environment includes the firm itself and
everything else that affects its success, such as
competitors, suppliers, customers, regulatory agencies, and
demographic, social, and economic conditions.
Business process
Business processes consist of steps related in time and place,
have a beginning and end, and have inputs and outputs.
Examples in construction include:
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Feasibility studies
Scheme design
Detail design
Estimating and tendering
Project planning
Construction on site
Administration
Framework for thinking about any
system in business
• A framework is a brief set of ideas for organizing a thought process
about a particular type of thing or situation.
• Work-centred analysis (WCA) framework is based on the idea that
business professionals can and should analyse systems by focusing on
the work being done.
• Work is the application of human and physical resources such as
people, equipment, time, effort, and money to generate outputs used by
internal or external customers.
• The WCA framework combines ideas from many sources including
total quality management, business process reengineering, and systems
theory.
• The WCA framework consists of six linked elements that can be used
for thinking about any information system or other business processes
and the information systems that support them.
General framework for thinking about business processes and the
information systems that support them.
Business processes today
• More than ever, business professionals face the challenge
of improving business processes to produce the results
internal or external customers want.
• Business processes form the basis of competition.
• To appreciate the theme of improving business processes
in a competitive world, we will look at three important
trends: global competition, new ways to do business, and
TQM. These trends call for thinking about information
systems as an integral part of the way businesses operate,
not as an isolated set of technical tools.
The construction sector and IT
 Traditionally, construction has not adopted IT with the
same rate as other industries, such as manufacturing and
financial services.
 In contrast to products of manufacturing, products of
construction are large in scale and varied in kind. Unlike
many other economic sectors, especially manufacturing,
the construction industry is characterised by activities,
which are discontinuous, dispersed, diverse and distinct
(the four D's Tay 1994).
 IT implementation in the construction industry is therefore,
on a project level, rendered more difficult.
Uses of IT in construction
The use of information, and similarly the use of IT to use this
information, has been described as having progressed through various
phases.
• The first phase lasted up to the late 1970s, involving use of IT to
achieve efficiency and cost savings in the processing of information.
• The second generation of IT developed for the construction industry
evolved during the late 1970s and continued through the late 1980s.
The primary aim for most of the developments in this era was to align
the technology with, or support the functions of, a construction
company.
• The third generation of IT dates from early 1990s, and is still evolving.
This is addressing the integration of the standalone systems in order to
maximise the use of IT as a strategic resource for construction. It also
focuses on the use of IT as a communication medium.
IT change within construction
• Not too long ago, the term IT meant computerisation. There is
evidence that the emphasis is switching from computerisation to
business enhancement.
• There is greater concentration on automating the processes of the
project and the construction organisation.
• The project management function is based on the timely delivery and
documentation of construction information.
• The delivery of construction information has taken the form of graphic,
textual, or verbal information formats exchanged between project
team-members.
• Typical information components include drawings, specifications,
change directives, estimates, management logs, and field reports.
In 1995, the UK government commissioned a study; Construct
It: Bridging the Gap, related to an Information Technology
strategy for the UK construction industry.
The strategy identified two key aims for future use of IT in the
construction industry:
1. Integrated projects communications framework, supporting
closer teamwork.
2. Integrated industry wide information comprising standard
component listings, building component benchmarks, best
practices, etc., to improve and inform construction projects.
These are considered long term goals. In the meantime specific IT
systems are developed to achieve incremental improvement in
different stages of the construction process.
Enablers of construction IT
• The main benefits of the change brought about by IT are
speed and virtual proximity.
• Large volumes of data can be processed faster, and
distributed to disperse geographical locations much more
quickly.
• These benefits have been widely shared by industry
because of the falling cost for computer hardware, an
explosion in software development, and cheaper
telecommunication costs.
Hardware and software
revolution
• The diminishing cost of personal computers has put
computing power within the reach of even the smallest
contractors.
• Rapidly developing hardware performance, coupled with
the development of storage drives with very large volumes,
modems, scanners, and back up devices has made the
computer suitable for storage and distribution of drawings
and other data in electronic format.
• The evolution of servers, network cards, modems and
routers have linked computers together providing a forum
for community collaboration.
Using IT resources in
construction
• It saves employee time, lost phone messages, and the
three-day time delay often associated with surface mail .
• It avoids twisty means of transferring data, for example
printing a document, faxing it, and then re-typing the data
at the receiving end in order to save it as an electronic file
• It allows the company and individuals to publish and
distribute their work efficiently, while attaining a high and
consistent quality in textual or graphical appearance.
• It provides access to information, allows communication
and distribution of documents in a single, uniform fashion.
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Besides acting as a means for general management and
processing of project and company information, there are
other ways in which IT has been taken on by construction.
These developments affect the construction process itself
and can be categorised into four main areas.
Standardisation (examples include the use of EDI and bar
coding),
Visualisation (comprising CAD, VR, and Augmented
Reality),
Communication (including email, video/data conferencing,
Intranets), and
Integration (employing info-bases and project specific
databases).
The RIBA Plan of Work is a well-recognised process protocol that
describes the CONSTRUCTİON PROCESS in 11 stages(5 phases)
Appraisal: Identification of client’s requirements and possible constraints on
development.
Strategic Briefing: Preperation of a strategic brief confirming key requirements and
constraints. Identification of procedures, organisational structure and range of
consultants and others to be engaged in the project.
Outline proposals: Starategic brieffull project brief, estimate and cost.
Detailed proposals: Preparation of detailed proposals
Final proposals: Preperation of final proposals for the project sufficient for coordination of all components and elements of the project.
Production ınformation:
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Preperation of production information for tender
Preperation of further production information required under the building contract.
Tender documentation: preperation of TD in sufficient detail.
Tender action: identification and evaluation of potential contractors and specialists
for the construction of the project. Obtaining and appraising tenders.
Mobilisation: Appointing contractor, issuing production information to the
contractor and arranging site handover to the contractor.
Construction to practical completion:
After practical completion: Final inspections and settling the final account
These eleven stages can be divided into five phases:
1. Requirement analysis phase includes Appraisal and
Strategic briefing.
2. Design phase covers the Outline, Detailed and Final
proposals, and Production of Information stages.
3. Tendering phase covers the Tender documentation
and Tender action stages.
4. Construction phase covers the mobilisation and
Construction to Practical completion stage.
5. Maintenance phase covers the After practical
Completion stage.
Visualisation
• The impact of developments in visualisation on construction
processes has been in the area of digitising information, which
previously had been in paper format.
• This not only improves the quality and visual effect of
construction information, it also eliminates much re-drafting
associated with the design process.
• Developments in information technology are changing the way
that construction teams generally, store, transmit, and coordinate information. Over the past decade, many design firms
have moved toward digital production of construction
documents.
• Specifications, standards, permits, licences, and other text based
construction documents are increasingly produced using word
processing software or spreadsheets.
Communication and data
exchange tools
The most significant impact that technology has had on the
management of information resources in construction is
perhaps in the area of communications.
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The Internet
World Wide Web
Intranets
EDI
E-business frameworks
Internet
The value of the Internet to construction companies derives from its
ability to easily connect globally to a vast amount of data, which would
otherwise have taken more time and money to organise. By exploiting
the resources of the Internet construction companies can gain the
following benefits.
• Reduced communication costs
• Enhanced coordination and communication
• Acceleration in the distribution of knowledge resources within and out
with the company
• Promotion and marketing for the company
• More later in the course ...
Project document management
• The management of project documentation is often key to
the schedule performance of the project, avoidance of
extensive re-working and effective quality control of the
project.
• The use of electronic options for management of such
documentation is growing as a result of IT technology.
• Electronic document management systems (EDMS)
provide a combined set of tools for full organisation of all
aspects relating to project documents. They cover the
control of their creation, revision, distribution, storage and
retrieval throughout and beyond the project lifecycle.
EDMS technologies
The following technologies are included in EDMS.
• Imaging for transforming paper to digital format using
scanners
• Full-text retrieval for accessing archived textual documents
• Workflow for mapping and controlling the route of
documents within the organisation
• Multimedia for managing audio and graphic information,
particularly, progress reports for site activities
• CAD for creating and editing documents
Standardisation
Examples of construction work where standardisation has
been applied include the use of
• bar code technology and
• electronic data interchange (EDI)
• Integration of project information is a problem inherent in
Construction. All parties in a a contruction project seem to
work on their own ‘island’ of information.
Process Modelling
• Process modelling is the method of naming business
processes and subdividing them into their basic elements
so that they can be studied and improved.
• Process modelling is an essential part of information
system development because it helps clarify the problem
the system attempts to solve and the way it goes about
solving that problem.
• Since we are looking a business processes from an IT
viewpoint we will look briefly at Data Flow Diagrams.
Data Flow Diagrams
• Data flow diagrams (DFDs) represent the flows of data
between different processes in a business.
• DFDs are an attractive technique because they describe
what users do rather than what computers do and involve
only four symbols: process, data flow, data store, and
external entity.
• The four sybols in the Gane-Sarson DFD notation focus on
the analysis on flows of data between sub-processes rather
than on the information technology used.
(Gane-Sarson DFD notation)
Figure below shows that the starting point in using DFDs is to create a
context diagram, which verifies the scope of the system by showing the
sources and destinations of data used and generated by the system being
modelled.
Context diagram for Ford purchasing system
After using the context diagram to establish the scope of the system, the
next step is to identify processes and break them down into sub-processes
to describe exactly how work is done. DFDs make it possible to look at
business processes at any level of detail by breaking them down into
successively finer sub-processes.
Data flow diagram showing main processes in Ford’s original purchasing system
Data flow diagram dividing PCH 1 into four sub-processes