Keywords: functional representation, product model, component state, construction requirement, intermediate function, IFC.

The development of an AEC project is often fragmented due to its technical complexity and long development cycle. Project participants frequently struggle with the consequences of the fragmentation, especially the unsatisfied collaboration between designers and constructors. Communicating construction requirements among the project participants distributed in various domains remains a challenge due to the lack of representation tools to capture, represent, and evaluate the functionalities for supporting construction processes, and this shortage further make it difficult to utilize information technology solutions for exchanging and evaluating the construction requirements. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is developed as an open and standardized semantic modeling language that is widely accepted by the AEC industry and various software vendors. The developed schemata in IFC cover many aspects of product modeling and project management [2]. However, there is less effort to explore the feasibility of using IFC language to model construction requirements. This paper attempts to study how to represent the intermediate function model through IFC modeling language.

The intermediate function concept is proposed to capture the functionality requirements for supporting construction [1,3,4]. The available conditions of intermediate functions have been studied from two viewpoints: the function system [1,3] and the temporal topological relationship between the function system and the function user [4]. Such conditions can also be captured as constructability knowledge [1]. Moreover, these studies indicate that such functional analysis should be based on an integrated project information framework.

Functions can be studied from six perspectives: function system, potential behaviour, user, interaction topology, functional requirements, and teleological knowledge. The intermediate function concept can be studied from three aspects: function system, function user, and the spatio-temporal relationship between the function system and the user. The function system comprises an array of building components, temporary facilities, and site components. The state of a product component determines its behaviour characteristic and capacity, while the system behaviour is determined by the state-based behaviours of its constituent components. The function user may be either the workers, or some heavy equipment, or the materials. Moreover, a function user can also be the in-progress building product or some temporary facilities. Only when the function user and provider are in the suitable interaction status, can the intermediate function be provided. These interaction statuses have been studied from the viewpoint of the spatio-temporal relationships, and the availability of these relationships determines the availability of the associated intermediate function.

This study explores the IFC representation of the intermediate function model and represents the classes in the product, process, and space models that are related by or relating to the intermediate function model. This study also defines the key attributes of the classes and the relationships between the classes. It is found that the intermediate function model can be represented by inheriting its classes from the IFC classes. The component state network and the space system are two important kernels to integrate the product, process, and intermediate function models.

1

Chua, D.K.H., and Song, Y., "Component State Criteria Representation to Incorporate Construction Program Knowledge for Constructability Analysis", CD-ROM Proceedings of 2003 Construction Research Congress, March. 19-21, Hawaii, 2003. doi:10.1061/40671(2003)90

2

IAI, Industry Foundation Classes IFC2x Edition 2, web site, last accessed, April 19, 2004.

3

Song, Y., and Chua, D.K.H., "COSEE: Component State Network Centric Model for Verifying Temporal and Spatial Consistence in Project Schedules", Proceedings of the 20th CIB W78 Conference on Information Technology in Construction, 325-332, 2003.

4

Song, Y., Chua, D.K.H., Chang C.L., and Bok S.H., "Spatio-Temporal Consistency Evaluation on Dynamic 3D Space System Model", Proceedings of the ninth international conference on civil and structural engineering computing, 2003. doi:10.4203/ccp.77.6

purchase the full-text of this paper (price £20)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to the book description
purchase this book (price £95 +P&P)