Keywords: process re-engineering, process models, product models, concurrent design, building design.

The design and construction process in a building project is a collaborative effort involving several specialist professionals. Problems within the construction industry such as fragmented organisational structure, traditional and local practices, poorly developed supply networks and missing competitive mechanisms are quite well known to researchers and practitioners. Improved data exchange and the overall better management of design information within the design process remains a key solution to improvement in current design practice. What has long been identified, however not yet achieved is that the design process and in a wider context the whole construction process should be carried out as an integrated process. Improving the efficiency of the building design process will involve the facilitation of interactions and communications between inter-disciplinary parties.

This paper documents the findings and the conclusions of research to overcome some of the shortcomings in the current design process. It concludes that to achieve a step change from the current methods of work, designers must work with all building data concurrently and influence all major design decisions through seamless interaction with building data. The research has shown that most design integration solutions (product data models) are technology-driven rather than business-driven and hence mainly appeal to middle management with limited business decision making power. These factors have inhibited the successful implementation of most well known integration efforts such as CIS/2 and the IAI-IFCs. Also the fact that two applications are data-integrated (i.e. their inputs and outputs map to a common conceptual representation) does not mean that they are functionally interoperable. A detailed inspection of any idealised engineering design process helps clarify this. True engineering design interoperability requires that an expert examination of the entire building can be called upon at any time in the design process. As explained within this paper such a process-change makes the mapping/visualisation of available design information to and from the different participants, time and scenario-dependent within the design process. Managing the product data exchange thus requires task coordination based on a representation of all design and engineering tasks along with verification of their relationships and impact on expected downstream activities (e.g. the effects of the structural layout on the building services). Such information can only be expressed unambiguously in a well defined process model.

This paper summarises the contribution of the research that is aimed at resolving the problems associated with the integration and transfer of heterogeneous design data such that it can be re-used by the different members within the design supply chain. This is demonstrated with the creation of a re-engineered process model and the creation of a Single Model Environment (SME) within the design phase that acts not only as a space (for integrated and concurrent design) but also as a link for design information transfer. Using the SME different building design alternatives can also be compared. Such a model has led to the integration of the briefing phase of the design process with other design and production phases and provided the basis for a building model that supports decision-making. In this model there is information for the designers regarding why and based on what the technical solution was chosen. Such an approach is beneficial for decision making for both the client and the designers involved in the design process.

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