In the realm of construction production control, effective communication across operational levels and the rapid influx of diverse data are essential. Yet, integrating this data faces challenges due to disparate systems and a lack of common terminology, resulting in data silos and hindered interoperability. An ontology-based solution emerges as promising for enhancing interoperability. This research paper introduces the development, implementation, and assessment of the cSite ontology, encompasses several crucial facets necessary for efficient production control such as location, activities, and documents. To evaluate its practicality, a real-case study was conducted, wherein the ontology was employed to answer competency questions through SPARQL queries. Furthermore, interactive dashboards, situated within the construction control rooms, were developed to present the information visually. This paper underscores the transformative potential of integrated and visualised production information in construction projects. Additionally, it illuminates how the cSite ontology can facilitate the development and implementation of construction digital twins.

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The past few years have seen new entrants into the construction sector backed with unprecedented levels of funding from venture capital funds or other large investment firms. These entrants seek to leverage industry 4.0 principles for the digitalization and industrialization of construction. In addition to new technologies, these firms also bring new business models that depart from the project-based tendering system found in traditional construction. The first new business model is vertical integration. These firms are structured as integrated hierarchical firms, keeping control of product architecture and processes in-house. These firms control production by developing their own off-site factories. The second new business model is digital systems integration. These firms leverage an integrated cloud-based product configurator to enable mass customization. Using principles of capital-light industry 4.0 supply chains, digital system integrators can manufacture parts from periphery supply chain partners suppliers, including new sectors such as automotive, aerospace, manufacturing or industrial. The third new business model is the transformation of an existing project-based business toward industrialized construction through the creation of a spinoff factories. The chapter includes examples of the three business models and concludes with a discussion of how new business models may be catalysts for potential disruption of the established construction sector.

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Extending current work on visualization in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector, this paper describes an industry-led collaborative research and innovation project to develop and use a control room on the construction site. The work is inspired by NASA mission operations, with its large-scale visual display. It addresses the challenges of visualizing realtime construction data. Working with a main contractor, technology companies, and other researchers, we first give an overview of the progress of the overall project to date and discuss our contributions on requirements, realtime simulation of construction data, and visualization. We conclude by discussing the contribution to work on visualizing construction.

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Manually laying out the floor plan for buildings with highly-dense adjacency constraints at the early design stage is a labour-intensive problem. In recent decades, computer-based conventional search algorithms and evolutionary methods have been successfully developed to automatically generate various types of floor plans. However, there is relatively limited work focusing on problems with highly-dense adjacency constraints common in large scale floor plans such as hospitals and schools. This paper proposes an algorithm to generate the early-stage design of floor plans with highly-dense adjacency and non-adjacency constraints using reinforcement learning based on off-policy Monte-Carlo Tree Search. The results show the advantages of the proposed algorithm for the targeted problem of highly-dense adjacency constrained floor plan generation, which is more time-efficient, more lightweight to implement, and having a larger capacity than other approaches such as Evolution strategy and traditional on-policy search.

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In the construction sector, complex constraints are not usually modeled in conventional scheduling and 4D building information modeling software, as they are highly dynamic and span multiple domains. The lack of embedded constraint relationships in such software means that, as Automated Data Collection (ADC) technologies become used, it cannot automatically deduce the effect of deviations to schedule. This paper presents a novel method, using semantic web technologies, to model and validate complex scheduling constraints. It presents a Linked-Data based Constraint-Checking (LDCC) approach, using the Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL). A prototype web application is developed using this approach and evaluated using an OpenBIM dataset. Results demonstrate the potential of LDCC to check for constraint violation in distributed construction data. This novel method (LDCC) and its first prototype is a contribution that can be extended in future research in linked-data, BIM based rule-checking, lean construction and ADC.

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New forms of data science, including machine learning and data analytics, are enabled by machine-readable information but are not widely deployed in construction. A qualitative study of information flow in three projects using building information modeling (BIM) in the late design and construction phase is used to identify the challenges of codification that limit the application of data science. Despite substantial efforts to codify information with common data environment (CDE) platforms to structure and transfer digital information within and between teams, participants work across multiple media in both structured and unstructured ways. Challenges of codification identified in this paper relate to software usage (interoperability, information loss during conversion, multiple modelling techniques), information sharing (unstructured information sharing, drawing and file based sharing, document control bottlenecks, lack of process change), and construction process information (loss of constraints and low level of detail). This paper contributes to the current understanding of data science in construction by articulating the codification challenges and their implications for data quality dimensions, such as accuracy, completeness, accessibility, consistency, timeliness, and provenance. It concludes with practical implications for developing and using machine-readable information and directions for research to extract insight from data and support future automation.

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Researchers are developing techniques to use augmented reality for construction progress monitoring, but these are not widely diffused. A barrier to wider use is that BIM software is often not updated in real-time between the construction office and the construction site. This paper proposes an integrated cloud-based framework to enable construction progress monitoring by creating an automated real-time bidirectional flow of information between the construction site and planning office. This seeks to take advantage of the new opportunities arising because of the consumer VR/AR devices that have come to market in the last year, and the potential for engineers and site personnel to take ownership of these low-cost devices and use them in their role. It contributes to the trajectory of research on virtual and augmented reality in construction by articulating a novel approach to construction progress monitoring through passive data acquisition, cloud-based processing and use of consumer VR/AR devices. The paper concludes by articulating next steps to develop prototypes and work with industry partners to enable them to engage in innovation.@en

The aim of this paper is to develop a framework for shared visualization between design office and construction office using augmented reality as a platform with a focus on the security of Building Information Model. The current paper is part of an ongoing study aimed at creating a real-Time bi-directional information flow between the construction office and site and focuses on a shared visualisation context. A framework architecture for enabling shared visualisation with a stress on the security of Building Information Model is discussed. A prototype application based on the framework was deployed on an Android device in a controlled environment for testing. The application augmented Building Information objects dynamically to the real-world without any latency. Salient features of the prototype include dynamic loading of Building Information content during the runtime, data encapsulation based on user privileges, deployability on portable low-end computing devices etc. Using shared visualization would empower the construction engineers with real-Time models updates with access to many near-optimal management solutions. This enables the engineers to narrow in on the best solution under given constraints.@en