Digital transformation

With a fund of £57,959 from the Higher Education Academy to lead an international network of partners and form the BIM-Hub, it was one of only eight projects funded from 232 applications. In 2014, it was recognised for its innovative use of BIM in education by the CIOB International Innovation and Research Award..

A new paradigm for rethinking construction (July 2019 – 31 March 2020; UKRI via TCN+, UCL): working with Constructing Excellence, the CIOB and leading industry partners, we identified hype-free future scenarios for construction and outlined the paradigm shift in business models needed to embrace these new Industry 4.0 technologies.

Explores how 3D information can be leveraged in computations of relevance when retrieving information linked to 3D artefacts. This research is crucial for making use of building models, with ever more information packed into them. The research continues to make an impact through its Autodesk Revit search engine app which has been downloaded over once per day since it was first released.

The vision is for all stakeholders in Digital Built Britain (DBB) to be able to meet their information needs. With the establishment of concepts such as BIM and Common Data Environments (CDE), built environment design, construction and operation are becoming increasingly information-intensive. This work was acknowledged as influencing the CDBB’s “Developing the Capabilities for a Digital Built Britain” report and “National Digital Twin” project.

We have already established ourselves as leaders in the field of digital construction techniques as exemplified by our innovative research into 3D concrete printing. Funded by the EPSRC and IMCRC, we have been developing 3D printing technology for the construction industry for almost a decade.

We have been awarded £1.3M worth of equipment to work on modern methods of delivery and maintenance of infrastructure, underpinned by the vision of transforming and modernising the construction industry.

Developing an innovative Integrated Evolutionary Design Methodology that allows stakeholders to predict the current and future energy efficiency of buildings – at both individual and neighbourhood levels – and make better-informed decisions in optimising the energy performance at building life cycle level, including operation and maintenance.

Focuses on identifying opportunities for synergies in ICT related RTD in the EeB (energy-efficient buildings) domain and engaging stakeholders in networking for future RTD and exploitation of results.

Quality information is crucial to the success of asset delivery, management and performance in the Digitised Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (DAECO) sector. During its lifecycle, the exposure and sensitivity of information to threats leaves it vulnerable – affecting the intrinsic, relational and security dimensions of information quality. 

Therefore, a resilient information lifecycle perspective that identifies capabilities and requirements is needed to assure information quality amid threats. This research develops and presents an information resilience (IR) framework by drawing on the theories of resilience, information quality and vulnerability.

Our focus on data as sources of societal and commercial value is helping industry actors embrace the radical new forms of production required to satisfy government policy, secure commercial advantage, address global challenges and meet intergenerational needs.

We have significant expertise in the areas of:

• Digital twins for construction projects
• Building information modelling
• 3D printing
• Sustainable building design and operation
• Energy simulation, prediction and integration with BIM
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning

Staff from our School with research activity within this area:

• Dr Aaron Anvuur
• Dr Derek Thomson
• Dr Karen Blay
• Dr Kirti Ruikar
• Dr Long Chen
• Professor Malcolm Cook
• Dr Mingzhu Wang
• Dr Peter Demian
• Professor Patricia Carrillo
• Dr Robby Soetanto
• Professor Tarek Hassan
• Dr Vanda Dimitriou