Supporting Knowledge-Intensive Construction Management Tasks in BIM

The delivery of products and services for construction-based businesses is increasingly becoming knowledge-driven and information-intensive. The proliferation of building information modelling (BIM) has increased business opportunities as well as introduced new challenges for the architectural, engineering and construction and facilities management (AEC/FM) industry. As such, the effective use, sharing and exchange of building life cycle information and knowledge management in building design, construction, maintenance and operation assumes a position of paramount importance. This paper identifies a subset of construction management (CM) relevant knowledge for different design conditions of building components through a critical, comprehensive review of synthesized literature and other information gathering and knowledge acquisition techniques. It then explores how such domain knowledge can be formalized as ontologies and, subsequently, a query vocabulary in order to equip BIM users with the capacity to query digital models of a building for the retrieval of useful and relevant domain-specific information. The formalized construction knowledge is validated through interviews with domain experts in relation to four case study projects. Additionally, retrospective analyses of several design conditions are used to demonstrate the soundness (realism), completeness, and appeal of the knowledge base and query-based reasoning approach in relation to the state-of-the-art tools, Solibri Model Checker and Navisworks. The knowledge engineering process and the methods applied in this research for information representation and retrieval could provide useful mechanisms to leverage BIM in support of a number of knowledge intensive CM/FM tasks and functions.

[1]  Madhav Prasad Nepal.  Automated extraction and querying of construction-specific design features from a building information model , 2011 .

[2]  野中 郁次郎,et al.  The Knowledge-Creating Company: How , 1995 .

[3]  Arto Kiviniemi,et al.  The IFC Standard - A Review of History, Development, and Standardization , 2012, J. Inf. Technol. Constr..

[4]  Martin Fischer,et al.  Characteristics of Design-Relevant Constructability Knowledge , 1997 .

[5]  M. Polanyi.  Personal Knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy , 1959 .

[6]  Yacine Rezgui,et al.  Past, present and future of information and knowledge sharing in the construction industry: Towards semantic service-based e-construction? , 2011, Comput. Aided Des..

[7]  Awad S. Hanna,et al.  Knowledge Acquisition and Development for Formwork Selection System , 1992 .

[8]  Michael J. Horman,et al.  Organizing Constructability Knowledge for Design , 2005 .

[9]  Sheryl Staub-French,et al.  Modeling and coordinating building systems in three dimensions: a case study , 2006 .

[10]  Chimay J. Anumba,et al.  The development of cognitive models for constructability assessment in steel frame structures , 2004 .

[11]  Yelda Turkan,et al.  Lessons from Using BIM to Increase Design-Construction Integration , 2014 .

[12]  Awad S. Hanna,et al.  Factors influencing formwork productivity , 1993 .

[13]  Thomas R. Gruber,et al.  Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing? , 1995, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[14]  John C. Kunz,et al.  Engineering test cases to motivate the formalization of an AEC project model as a directed acyclic graph of views and dependencies , 2004, J. Inf. Technol. Constr..

[15]  R.J. Scherer,et al.  A distributed multi-model-based Management Information System for simulation and decision-making on construction projects , 2011, Adv. Eng. Informatics.

[16]  H. Randolph Thomas,et al.  Forecasting Labor Productivity Using Factor Model , 1994 .

[17]  Thomas Liebich,et al.  Facility Management Handover Model View , 2013, J. Comput. Civ. Eng..

[18]  Bryan Lawson,et al.  Modes and features: the organization of data in CAD supporting the early phases of design , 1991 .

[19]  Ivica Završki,et al.  Construction baseline productivity: Theory and practice , 1999 .

[20]  Celson Lima,et al.  Knowledge representations with ontology support for collaborative engineering in architecture engineering and construction , 2014, J. Inf. Technol. Constr..

[21]  James T. O'Connor,et al.  Constructability Concepts for Engineering and Procurement , 1987 .

[22]  Martin Fischer,et al.  Knowledge and Reasoning for MEP Coordination , 2003 .

[23]  Keith A Bisharat.  Construction Graphics: A Practical Guide to Interpreting Working Drawings , 2004 .

[24]  H. Randolph Thomas,et al.  Factors Affecting Masonry‐Labor Productivity , 1991 .

[25]  Boyd C. Paulson,et al.  A feature ontology to support construction cost estimating , 2003, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[26]  Tomasz Arciszewski,et al.  CONSTRUCTABILITY ANALYSIS: MACHINE LEARNING ApPROACH , 1997 .

[27]  Sheryl Staub-French,et al.  Querying a building information model for construction-specific spatial information , 2012, Adv. Eng. Informatics.

[28]  John Messner,et al.  Implementing Observational Research Methods to Study Team Performance in Construction Management , 2010 .

[29]  Amr A. Oloufa,et al.  Spatial Information: Classification and Applications in Building Design , 2002 .

[30]  Jakob Beetz,et al.  IfcOWL: A case of transforming EXPRESS schemas into ontologies , 2008, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[31]  Charles M. Eastman,et al.  A Knowledge-Based Framework for Quantity Takeoff and Cost Estimation in the AEC Industry Using BIM , 2014 .

[32]  Jami J. Shah.  Assessment of features technology , 1991, Comput. Aided Des..

[33]  E W East,et al.  Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBIE): Requirements Definition and Pilot Implementation Standard , 2007 .

[34]  Charles M. Eastman,et al.  BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors , 2008 .

[35]  Sheryl Staub-French,et al.  A conceptual approach to track design changes within a multi-disciplinary BIM environment , 2015 .

[36]  Harry Wagter,et al.  Architectural Design-by-Features , 1997 .

[37]  Yacine Rezgui,et al.  Review of information and the state of the art of knowledge management practices in the construction industry , 2001, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[38]  Tamer E. El-Diraby,et al.  Ontology-based optimisation of knowledge management in e-Construction , 2005, J. Inf. Technol. Constr..

[39]  Ernst Rank,et al.  Topological analysis of 3D building models using a spatial query language , 2009, Adv. Eng. Informatics.

[40]  Frank Boukamp,et al.  Ontology-Based Approach to Context Representation and Reasoning for Managing Context-Sensitive Construction Information , 2011, J. Comput. Civ. Eng..

[41]  Kincho H. Law,et al.  A Methodology for Automating Conceptual Structural Design , 1991 .

[42]  Sheryl Staub-French,et al.  Ontology-based feature modeling for construction information extraction from a building information model , 2013 .

[43]  Michael R. Genesereth,et al.  Logical foundations of artificial intelligence , 1987 .

[44]  T. Michael Toole,et al.  Mixed Method Research: Fundamental Issues of Design, Validity, and Reliability in Construction Research , 2010 .

[45]  Alan D. Russell,et al.  HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING FOR INTERPRETATION OF SPATIAL CONFIGURATION , 2005 .

[46]  Nancy J. Cooke,et al.  Knowledge Elicitation , 2003 .

[47]  Tamer E. El-Diraby,et al.  A domain ontology for construction concepts in urban infrastructure products , 2011 .

[48]  Alison Cawsey.  Developing an explanation component for a knowledge-based system: Discussion , 1995 .

[49]  Jochen Teizer,et al.  Ontology-based semantic modeling of construction safety knowledge: Towards automated safety planning for job hazard analysis (JHA) , 2015 .