The primary aim of this research is to define smart construction objects (SCOs), the fundamental building blocks of future construction. SCOs are construction resources (e.g., machinery, device, and materials) that are made smart by augmenting them with technologies conferring autonomy, awareness, and the ability to interact with their vicinity. This smartness can enable better decision making in construction. Understanding of SCOs, however, is still in its infancy. Informed by theories on ubiquitous computing and general smart objects, this paper first defines the panoramic and interconnected properties that differentiate SCOs from conventional construction objects. Second, representative scenarios of the use of SCOs are given to illustrate the new workflow with enhanced smartness in the future. Next, using prefabrication construction as an example, this paper further elaborates SCOs using Industry Foundation Classes Extensible Markup Language and exploring their software/hardware representations. This is the first-ever research to articulate canonical SCOs and their core properties, computing applications, and representations. More specific and applicable SCOs are compellingly desired as the future study. Properly linked to building information modeling and Internet of Things, SCOs can enable a safer, greener, more efficient, and more effective construction system that has ever been seen.

Logistic and supply-chain management (LSCM) is of paramount importance to a construction project but is often problematic. Many researchers see LSCM per se as a web of decisions to be made, and attribute problems to a lack of process and information concurrence. This is exacerbated by fragmentation, discontinuity, and heterogeneity in construction LSCM. The bidirectional information flow remains unachieved in the existing sensing-based systems for construction LSCM. Without panoramically interconnecting to other smart abilities such as an automatic action-taking ability, most existing sensing-based systems are insufficient to realize their full potential in facilitating construction LSCM. Building on previous studies on smart construction objects (SCOs), this paper aims to develop an SCO-enabled system that can enhance concurrence of process and information, with a view to informing better decision making in construction LSCM. It does so by first analyzing the problems in prevailing LSCM practices using business process reengineering. Based on this analysis, the architecture for an SCO-enabled LSCM system is proposed and developed into a prototype. Then the system is calibrated and validated in the rich context of offshore prefabrication housing production in Hong Kong. It is found that SCOs, with their properties of awareness, communicativeness, and autonomy built into a smart management system, can supplement the existing LSCM process with more-concurrent decision making information. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge in two areas. It adds to the theoretical debate on decision making by arguing the importance of information and process concurrence and trying to explicate it in the context of construction LSCM. In addition, the SCO-enabled LSCM system can be implemented in real-life practice to alleviate the many problems existing in construction LSCM.

Although emerging technologies offer the construction industry many opportunities for computer supported collaboration environments, the companies adopting these technologies usually fail in achieving the full benefits from their implementations. The reason for this is found to be focusing too much on the technical factors and ignoring or underestimating the factors related to change, implementation, human and organizational factors, and the roles of the management and end users. Each new information technology (IT) implementation involves some change for the organization and the employees, and is therefore a source of resistance and confusion unless special attention is paid to managing this change. This paper aims to review the related theoretical concepts and previous work on success factors for collaboration environment implementations and failure reasons for IT, and to present the current approaches adopted by construction organizations implementing collaboration environments. In order to achieve the...

The transient nature of project teams and the competitive environment in which construction organizations operate require an effective mechanism to manage and reuse the knowledge created in the projects without straining its resources. A methodology for “live” capture and reuse of project knowledge was developed for the purpose and encapsulated into a software tool. A study was conducted of a medium-sized UK-based construction sector firm to investigate the use the software tool as the central strand of its knowledge management (KM) framework. The tool was subsequently designed to integrate with a staff profile system and an e-forum. The new system was intended to bridge the communication gap between the company’s geographically dispersed offices by connecting the people together and, hence, facilitating the timely sharing of both tacit and explicit knowledge. Top management’s commitment was found vital in the successful implementation of knowledge management and the nurturing of the desired suppo...

There have been several isolated attempts to automate aspects of the construction project delivery process. These have only been marginally successful and it is increasingly being recognized that significant improvements can only be made through an integrated approach that involves the synergistic integration of information technologies into the project delivery process. A cyber-physical systems approach is expected to reduce the tremendous losses that are directly attributable to the inefficiencies associated with the lack of effective integration. This paper describes a specific effort that seeks to facilitate real-time consistency checking between virtual models and the physical construction. It argues for the effective integration of computational resources (such as wireless sensors, virtual prototyping, real-time tracking and data fusion) with the design and construction process, and outlines how bi-directional consistency can be maintained between the virtual models (which are often ignored once the physical construction commences) and the physical facility. The opportunity offered by the adoption of a cyber-physical systems approach to make the construction process more intelligent and sustainable is discussed and the key benefits highlighted.

The implementation of a new collaboration environment initiates many changes to an organization and to the end users as a result of the new way of working and the use of new technologies. Unless these changes are well managed at the organizational level, it will not be possible to achieve the full benefits expected from the implementation of the collaboration environment. This paper presents a framework for managing the organizational changes brought into construction organizations by the introduction of a new collaboration environment. The framework consists of five primary stages: initiation of change, development of change vision, planning of organizational change, implementation of change, and evaluation of change. The processes for each stage are detailed in integrated definition function modeling diagrams. The evaluators in construction organizations have found the framework to be successful in managing organizational changes.