The use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) is increasingly widespread within the Architecture, Engineering, Construction & Operations (AECO) sector. BIM allows the construction of a digital scale model of the asset to be built, ensuring the early detection of conflicts and interferences, enabling communication between the different participant agents, and facilitating the processes in the maintenance and management phase. Studies on the subject are many and varied. However, very few works refer to the inclusion of BIM in the public procurement stage, one of the most complex and competitive stages within the asset’s life cycle. A bibliographic review has been conducted about the BIM situation in the AECO sector contracts, the existing problems and the possible solutions to implement. In the specific field of public procurement, Spain has made great progress, especially at the regional level. During 2020, a total of 440 tenders with BIM requirements were published, with an investment volume of EUR 752 million, which represents an increase of 230% compared to 2017. The aim of this research is to analyze the Spanish public procurement, highlighting the progress made so far in the implementation of this technology, as well as to develop a proposal of BIM requirements that, in general, could be used as a reference for tenders of the AECO sector in the country. With this objective, a selection of twenty relevant public tenders is made, covering both the building and infrastructure fields. The requirements address areas such as: BIM uses, BIM deliverables, model structure, Level of Development, Common Data Environment, classification systems, standards or quality control.

Sustainability and interoperability are two closely related concepts. By analyzing the three fundamental facets of sustainability—economic, ecological and ethical/social—it is easier to address their connection with the concept of interoperability. This paper focuses on the economic aspect, in the field of civil engineering. In this area, due to the local nature of many of the software tools used, interoperability problems are frequent, with few studies addressing the economic impact of this, especially in small engineering firms. The main contribution of this paper is a design methodology for linear works based on the federation of building information modelling (BIM) models created with different software tools, conceived to break the interoperability issues between these applications. As an example, this methodology is applied to a mountain road widening project. A detailed economic analysis of the application of this methodology by an engineering Spanish firm reveals the important cost reductions that the integration of the software tools provides versus the prior practices.

Recent studies have brought attention to the pedagogical potential of mobile devices, and various experiments have tested tools in handheld devices, indicating that they strengthen and support learning in different fields. The purpose of the work presented in this paper was to design a 3D construction mobile game for 3D spatial visualization training, with the aim of familiarizing users with a 3D environment and improving their understanding of the 2D-3D relationship. This paper describes the architecture of the system that we developed, which includes several different applications: (a) a mobile game played on touch screen devices to permit students to solve exercises about building models with unit-sized cubes in a 3D environment, (b) a PC application, to permit the teacher to design exercises and manage users, and (c) a server application and a database to collect and manage data. The J2ME Mobile 3D Graphics library is used and development is done in Netbeans. Satisfaction questionnaires and observation records were kept of work done by the users in order to evaluate the mobile game. The results show a high degree of satisfaction with the game and that users realize how useful this game can be for the proposed aims.

This research work attempts to approach the measuring of the working equipment necessary to make floating caissons for maritime work and their performances. With this objective, an empirical study has been carried out based on the construction of five floating caissons with a rectangular layout of 34.00 meters in length, 17.00 meters in width, and 19.00 meters in depth, lightened with 32 vertical cells. This work was carried out in the port of Granadilla, Tenerife (Spain). The updated scientific literature related to the execution of this type of floating structure refers to the importance of the calculation hypotheses, the actions to be taken into account, the service states or the importance of the choice of materials (concrete and steel). However, scientific research does not seem to face the problem of how to size the working team necessary to execute this type of structure. The work force is approached from the point of view of the adequate sizing of working groups. The important contribution of the article to the project and construction management literature is the development and capability of an easy-to-use optimization model for planning the labour and labour days required in floating caisson construction. The optimization model proposed in this research allows the project managers of a construction company to estimate the labour costs and teams necessary in the execution of the construction. This gives it a competitive advantage both in the construction phase and in the bidding phase for the award of the work. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2022-08-02-01 Full Text: PDF