Defining a Research Agenda for AEC

The call for whitepapers issued by the organizers of this workshop asks for participants to address two main areas: • Identification of the research agenda for AEC • Prioritization of the research needs and measurement of achievements The process of defining a research agenda for any industry should be a combination of methods and the methods must aim to ensure the comprehensiveness of the topics suggested. The previous NSF CE&M workshop [1] has dedicated (almost) a whole chapter (chapter 4) to identifying research topics in construction. The participants adopted the brainstorming method to generate a research agenda. Given the way this current workshop is organized, I think that two additional approaches should be considered: problem analysis and cross-fertilization. While the three approaches are not disjunctive, I think that a wider range of solutions can be generated when each approach is applied separately. This paper presents three research topics: constructability modeling, wearable robotic machines, and development of better methods of construction education. Each topic was determined using one of the three approaches. PROBLEM ANALYSIS / CONSTRUCTABILITY MODELING With the exception of " cookie cutter " residential developments, all construction projects are, even if only to some small extent, different. Each construction project is a prototype with specific objectives and constrains such as time, money, quality, labor (amount and skills), safety policy, etc. The success of a project depends on the knowledge and experience of the participants in planning, design, procurement and field operations. Hence the main challenge of the construction industry is to identify, use (and) further develop the knowledge and experience of the participants in the construction process. The optimum use of construction knowledge and experience in planning, design, procurement, and field operations to achieve overall project objectives is defined by CII as " constructability " [2]. The constructability problem can be defined as " achieving the goals of the owner within the constrains (limitations) of the builder. " Constructability research is not new to the AEC community. Three different research branches of constructability can already be identified: • Human-oriented research. Includes managerial and organizational approaches. In this case the constructability knowledge is assumed to lie within the participants in the process and the main problem is timing their participation in the project. Most of the constructability research done to the day is related to this branch. Among the more than forty papers published in this area, the CII Constructability …