IT support for construction planning : a system design based on integrated information

Abstract: The aim of the work has been to develop a conceptual designof an IT system for construction planning. For the development,an iterative method has been used, based on prototypesdeveloped in dialogue with industry professionals. The resultsare presented in four papers describing the various developmentstages of the system design: the main approach with its torre-sponding demonstrator, the description of an implementedsystem, the evaluation of the system in a field trial and last,a prototype enhanting the functionality of the implementedsystem. Finally, a synthesis is presented and discussed.This thesis demonstrates a possible integration of productand construction information together with the main functionsneeded to support incremental construction planning.A central task of construction planning has been defined asthe configuration of a construction process that Will convert adesigned building into a real building. Consequently, the mainareas a supporting system needs to deal with are: the designedproduct, the production assignments and realisa tion of theproduction tasks including connections between products, activities and resources. Based on this, a conceptual schema coveringthese areas has been defined. The main approach here is theintegration between the two central objects of planning -products and activities - thus including the no tion of`result' in activities, alongside time, resources and costs.For this, an object oriented representation of the buildingdesign was used, aligning this research into the overalldevelopment and use of product models.Construction planning is usually carried out top down andstep by step.Thus, the system functions proposed allow the users toplan the production process incrementally, taking into accountpreviously generated restrictions while making use ofprofessional knowledge and earlier cases. The main approach isto operationalise the notion of `construction knowledge' in theform of templates for task structures, product decompositionand production methods. Combined with individual views forallowed, planned and achieved results, the use of templatesaims at providing an efficient planning environment.