Innovate UK Project: BIM Enabled Low Impact School Procurement

Work started on this Innovate UK-funded project in May 2013 (see previous blog post) and the following posters have been developed for dissemination purposes. For more information on the project, take a look at the project website:

BIM Enabled Low Impact School Procurement    

The project aims to develop an innovative approach to using Building Information Modelling (BIM) to enable continuous process and product development through collaboration between key members of the supply-chain. Using BIM to close the upstream knowledge-feedback-loop between construction and design, the BIM-ECP platform will support integrated collaborative procurement, design, and delivery of low impact standardised designs for turnkey school projects. The work will be undertaken over 36 months.

And the project video...

EU Project: FutureFit Built Assets

FutureFit Built Assets is a fully funded European project created specifically to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) approach Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Government Soft Landings (GSL) one step at a time.

With the UK government’s Construction Strategy requiring the use of fully collaborative BIM by 2016 the need for SMEs to respond to this mandate is urgent. However, the adoption and implementation of BIM requires the development of skills and enhanced understanding of new processes and software applications. This in turn involves significant investment by SMEs which are called to choose from a plethora of BIM systems, products and software tools.

To support SMEs in dealing with this challenge, FutureFit @ Oxford Brookes University is organising a series of workshops offering companies a unique opportunity to experience BIM first hand. The workshops include presentations from subject experts and cover aspects of modelling buildings, managing information and enabling project collaboration. The programme is hosted at the Oxford Brookes BIM Laboratory which offers access to the latest project and construction management tools and BIM software packages to facilitate hands-on experience. The overall aim of the programme is to support participants to:

• Enhance their general and practical understanding of BIM
• Explore the usefulness of various BIM processes and tools
• Develop basic BIM capacity in information exchange and collaboration

The programme includes three workshops which are offered free of charge to eligible SMEs who register with FutureFit (registration is also free). Participants are recommended to attend all three workshops (each workshop will run twice). Take a look at the programme here. Basic computer skills are required, while experience in the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) applications would be an added advantage.

There are only 30 places available which are offered on a first come, first served basis. To book your place please contact Julian Carter at julian@secbe.org.uk confirming your preferred dates.

Sustainability Performance Measurement Framework for PFI Projects in the UK - 2014 Outstanding Paper Award

Congratulations to Esra Kurul (Senior Lecturer in REC), Ramin Keivani (Reader in REC) and Lei Zhou (Lecturer at Northumbria University and a former PhD student in REC). Together they wrote the following paper for the Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction and have won the Outstanding Paper Award for 2014. The paper was based on the PhD work carried out by Lei Zhou (who was also the lead author on the paper) when he was a student in the Department of REC at Oxford Brookes. 

The full paper is available to view free of charge on the Emerald Insight website for the next 12 months. The following is an extract from the abstract, introduction and conclusion - you can view the full paper here: Sustainability Performance Measurement Framework for PFI Projects in the UK.

Purpose:
The relationship between sustainable development and private finance initiative (PFI) procurement systems is clarified, and the current debate on the effectiveness of PFI in the UK and the benefits of PFI to deliver sustainable construction is reviewed. The study develops a sustainability assessment framework encompassing environmental, economic, social and technical aspects through the life cycle of the procurement process. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Introduction:
Achieving sustainable development is a fundamental challenge for society worldwide. Managing sustainability holistically is exigent, thus requiring a framework that integrates environmental and social performance with economic and technical performance.

This study aims to assist PFI decision-makers who wish to integrate the sustainability agenda into their projects throughout the infrastructure's life cycle. In addition, it makes a contribution to understanding of different dimensions of sustainability and the debate on sustainability indicator framework, particularly, in the context of sustainable construction. In this regard the literature review of sustainability indicators draws together a conceptual framework which has the potential to evaluate the holistic sustainability performance of existing PFI projects. Data collected through a national questionnaire survey populates this framework and facilitates examination of sustainability performance in the PFI industry. Benchmarking and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the future PFI projects are thus identified.

Conclusion:

This study developed a conceptual framework for sustainability assessment for PFI projects which has been termed as SPFI framework. According to this framework achieving sustainable development in PFI projects requires balancing three bottom lines: social, economic and environmental. In addition, it requires the inclusion of sustainable technology development. The suggested SPFI framework lies at the cross-section of these four dimensions and contains 28 indicators. The new systemic indicator framework will enable the PFI projects to go beyond the certification system and towards a more sustainable process. It is capable of providing a better assessment of various types of PFI buildings and infrastructure performance through the whole life procurement process.

A questionnaire survey was conducted to validate the framework and a five-point Likert type scale system is used to measure the sustainability performance level of existing PFI projects. Survey results suggested that there is strong demand for sustainability in PFI projects and SPFI framework is a useful tool to measure PFI sustainability performance. PFI can make contribution to social and economic sectors and there is potential to improve environmental performance. However, due to the nature of private funding and the extra investment needed in renewable technologies, the adaption of innovative technologies such as the PV system will be limited unless there are some financial incentives to foster the diffusion of those renewable technologies.

Based on the survey results, KPIs and benchmarking are developed for measuring sustainability performance in future PFI projects. The KPIs are “care of end-users, whole life costing, health and safety, capital cost, energy consumption during operation and low maintenance cost”.

The application of the framework proposed in this paper, however, is not limited to PFI projects but is also applicable to other types of PPP projects. Moreover, similar to sustainable development, it is not an end product, but an on-going process. Many indicators (particularly the technical indicators) will change due to rapid development and growth of low carbon technologies and innovation research.

For more information about the paper, please contact the corresponding author, Lei Zhou.

PhD Success for Veronika Schröpfer

Congratulations to Veronika Schröpfer who has successfully completed and defended her PhD thesis and has the t-shirt to prove it. The Department held a celebration (photos by Andressa Minogue)...

Veronika was awarded a three-year PhD studentship by the EPSRC and Oxford Brookes University in October 2009. Veronika's research examined knowledge transfer in project teams, delivering office buildings to sustainable building certificate standards (BREEAM). The focus was to find out how the different project participants share the knowledge on how to build sustainably with each other, and accordingly determine ways of enhancement. In particular, she looked at the social network between the project participants and how this affects their knowledge exchange, as one of the main barriers preventing the built environment shifting towards a green industry standard is the diffusion of knowledge on how to build sustainably.

I caught up with Veronika to ask her a few questions about her PhD, her time at Oxford Brookes and what she is doing now...

1. What is your background and why did you decide to do a PhD?

Before joining Oxford Brookes, I graduated from the University of Applied Sciences in Oldenburg (Germany) with a MEng in Real Estate Economics and Facilities Management (2007), and the University of Applied Sciences in Heidelberg with a Diplom in Architecture (2004). I had work experience in several architecture offices in Germany, Spain and the US and then worked in Corporate Real Estate Management of Bosch Security Systems in Munich, before becoming a Consultant on industrial assets for Jones Lang LaSalle in Frankfurt.

2. Why did you choose to do your PhD at Brookes?

I decided to do my PhD at Oxford Brookes as they offered a scholarship in my exact area of research interest.

3. What is your research about? And how will it make a difference in 'the real world'?

My research is looking at how to transfer the knowledge on building sustainably between all participants in a sustainable office construction project.  By all, I mean also the builders. I used social network analyses and  compared projects in Germany with similar projects in the UK. It will make a difference in the real world in lots of ways: firstly, I developed a framework that can be used to improve the transfer of knowledge in project environments; secondly, I have disseminated the results to the research participants and also presented the results at two conferences and finally I will now use my results in my new job - to improve the transfer of knowledge on sustainable construction amongst European architects (all 560,000 of them!)

4. Looking back over your PhD and your time at Brookes, what have been the highlights? And the most challenging bits?

The biggest highlight is the community of PhD students within the area of the built environment - the four departments (Real Estate and Construction, Architecture and Planning) are really close and have an international flavour and are just a great bunch of people. The support that the university offers to international students is also really good (language support and events). The most challenging time was after the third year when my scholarship ended but the PhD wasn't quite finished.

Says it all really...

5. What have you got planned for the next 5 years career-wise?

Well, I started to work as a Project Officer at Architects' Council of Europe (ACE-CAE) at the beginning of March and I moved to Brussels which is an amaaaazing city! I hope that I will stay in this job for some time. I am representing the European architects in EU funded research projects on sustainable construction, supporting the projects with my expertise and disseminating the results to our member organisations - so all quite exciting and interesting. 

Thanks Veronika, and all the best for the future from all of us in the Department of Real Estate and Construction.

FutureFit Built Assets

Oxford Brookes University is part of the FutureFit Built Assets knowledge exchange and research project that is being delivered in collaboration with SECBE (South East Centre for the Built Environment). The project (worth £140,000) is part financed by the South East European Regional Development Fund Programme (2007 - 2013). The project started in September 2013 and will run for 30 months.

So, what is it all about? I asked Christos Vadilakis (Department of Real Estate and Construction), who is leading the part of the project which is based at Oxford Brookes:

Christos Vadilakis, Project Lead at Oxford Brookes

'This project brings together key industry partners to pool expertise and resources to augment the value for money of support that can be provided to SMEs (small and medium enterprises). The project aims to improve the process and change the behaviour of SMEs towards the adoption of BIM (Building Information Modelling) and SL (Soft Landings). The project also provides a platform for knowledge sharing and connects companies with BIM and SL capabilities into supply chains. The University’s main role is to act as a ‘knowledge base provider' developing proposals and establishing knowledge collaborations with SMEs'.

The project will result in further engagement with construction companies and service providers to address current challenges facing the construction industry. More specifically FutureFit focuses on the:

• Sustainable construction and operation of built assets
• Information technology adoption in the construction sector
• Involvement of small and medium enterprises (SMEs)

FutureFit is about creating capable teams with a better understanding of how a project will be built and operate. It’s about reducing cost through waste and re-working, risk and time to market.

For more information about the project, take a look at the FutureFit website.

The Construction Industry: a suitable place for women?

I was looking through a pile of undergraduate dissertations over the summer and one topic really stood out:

Perceptions of the suitability of a career in the construction industry: an investigation into the views of 16-18 year old women. By Sabrina Spagnoli (BSc Construction Project Management 2011).

It stood out for a couple of reasons: I can remember the distinct lack of imaginative careers advice when I was 16 and I was interested to learn more about how and why women are working in the construction industry and how perceptions of the industry are changing in the 21st century.

Wolf whistling has now been banned on many construction sites (photo courtesy of the Daily Express)

So, on to Sabrina's dissertation (all quotes from the dissertation are shown in italics and are used with Sabrina's permission). The abstract starts with her reasons for selecting the topic: during the course of my degree there has always been a noticeable lack of females studying for a degree in Construction Project Management or related subjects. This became even clearer during the industrial placement year which I undertook during 2010-11, where I met few women who had wanted to study construction at the age of 16-18 years old. 

The main aim of the research was to determine where the views of the construction industry came from and if these views are prominent throughout young women, and also to establish whether a career in construction is even considered at the ages of 16-18.

Sabrina identified three main issues during her research: the poor perception of the industry; the tendency of women to join the industry later on in their career and the lack of education women receive about career choices (including construction). She noted that the majority of women who are employed in the construction industry tend to be in administrative roles - for the purposes of her research, Sabrina did not consider such roles as a career in construction.

Sabrina carried out a literature review which examined the history of women at work from the campaigning work of the suffragettes for equal rights through the second world war where women had to take on traditionally 'male ' jobs, to the feminist movement in the 1960s and the Equal Pay Act of 1975. She then looked at perceptions of women at work, the issues of part-time work and the changing life and career expectations of young women entering the workplace as well as factors that seemed to be influencing career choices (lack of female role models in the science and engineering industries, personal experience, the media, friends and family, subject choice at school).

In order to carry out her research, Sabrina used a combination of focus groups with 16-18 year old women who were in the process of making career choices and also interviews with women who were working in the construction industry. By using this combination she was able to access both pre-career and in-career information and experiences. The questions she asked were designed to investigate the following:

• Why 16-18 year old women were not choosing a career in the construction industry
• If there were influences pressuring young people into certain stereotypical career paths
• If students aged 16-18 were aware of the vast career opportunities connected to a degree in Construction Management

The main findings were that younger women are predominantly choosing subjects which they are taking at school and which they are confident in. Perceptions of the industry are coming from the media and parental influences and, most importantly, first hand experiences. These are having an adverse effect on the construction industry for some women. Consequently, many younger women with the option of studying a degree in Construction Management at university are unlikely to follow this career path because it seems they have a preformed idea of what they want to study for a career in, which doesn't generally include construction.

Moving on to the conclusions and recommendations...

From the examined information, there are gaps in the current knowledge; mainly the amount and quality of the information young people receive when deciding on a career, and whether or not the information is correct and concise on the career paths they will ultimately follow. Generally, young women's perception of the industry seems to be coming from the media. What was also discovered through the research was that women were viewing the construction industry as the stereotypical crude, wolf-whistling builder on site, which most women have the unfortunate experience of. People are not detaching this stereotype from a career in the industry; moreover, the question remains as to why this is. From the findings of this research the reason would seem to be a lack of knowledge and education towards the industry.

The information gathered shows that the construction industry is not making full use of the workforce. The image which the industry currently holds is unattractive to the female workforce and needs to be addressed. Early exposure to the industry through the work placement scheme will help young females see the vast amount of career opportunities which the industry has to offer.

And what about Sabrina herself? I asked her a couple of questions...

First of all, why she decided to do a degree in construction. Her reply: 'I decided to do a degree in construction because I studied some of the construction modules in first year and enjoyed them and was very interested in the modules so decided to switch from real estate to construction. I found the information mainly from websites and I also spoke to a few of the construction tutors who helped me with career paths and potential jobs opportunities with a construction degree'. Sabrina had originally chosen a degree in real estate (based on work experience and advice from family).

Secondly, what can women offer the construction industry? Her reply: 'Women should absolutely be in the construction industry, there is no reason for them not to be. I found from my research that it is generally women who have the idea that there will be sexism in the industry, not men. All women and men have different skills and it would be a great loss to the industry to narrow its potential if women were not in the industry. As the industry is currently at a standstill in regards to the amount of women joining the industry I feel that more women need to be offered the opportunity to join the industry from career advisors at a young age so they can make an informed decision'.

Sounds like a case for more offers of work experience opportunities in construction to students in year 10 or 11 at school. And more events to raise awareness, such as the excellent Schools Challenge that the Department took part in a few years ago where local schools were invited into the Department to take part in a construction challenge in the Workshop.

Schools Challenge 2011 - photo by Franco Cheung

Award winning project inspired by MSc dissertation

Andy Smith graduated from the MSc Project Management in the Built Environment in December 2011. Andy works as a Senior Construction and Design Manager for World Duty Free Group and studied for his MSc as a distance-learning student. When it came to his dissertation he decided to use a real-life case study based at Birmingham Airport. The project that followed has just been awarded the Champion of Champions accolade at the Green Apple Awards for Environmental Best Practice, as well as the Retail Green Champion award. The award-winning project focused on the development of an energy assessment model for concession based retail organisations and was based on the World Duty Free Store at Birmingham Airport. Thanks to Andy and the World Duty Free Group for allowing us to use the following information on our blog.

The following is an extract from the original dissertation abstract:

This dissertation seeks to address this issue in a very practical way with an academic grounding to give an organisation a visibility framework for a project or programme in order to make investment decisions. It has developed a tool to simplistically assess technologies with Key Performance Indicators in energy consumption, capital and operational cost. The research has been targeted at retailers who operate in a fit-out only arena as they do not normally construct buildings. A case study retail unit (Duty Free concessionaire) has been used at Birmingham Airport to carry out this exploratory research.

The case study was framed around the electrical and HVAC systems and was successful in providing evidence to support additional investment in far more energy efficient technology A per square area reduction in power consumption of 54% was achieved against an existing unit. The method of assessment ensures the project is assessed as it designed, built,
commissioned and lastly occupied, something which many assessment tools and frameworks fail to provide.

The research concludes by recommending further development of the method to incorporate other areas of the build. It also suggests aggregation of construction activities by rolling up the output of the tool. By using a grading system it provides the tangible elements for communication needed for organisations today which operate in both a global and local market.

And the full project report:

PhD Success

Congratulations to Yunqing (Lynn) Xu and Leyon Nanayakkara who have both successfully completed and defended their PhD theses. And have passed, subject to minor corrections. Those who know about these things will not be surprised by this. A PhD thesis that is passed without any corrections at all is a rare thing. A very rare thing. I will not open this can of worms, instead I will tell you what Leyon's research is about (if you want to find out about Lynn's research take a look at the report on Hot Property):

Leyon's research investigates how productivity could be improved in the Sri Lankan public sector construction industry by using effective and efficient site plans. The main objectives of the research follow:

• To review the theoretical basis of existing concepts relating to construction site productivity
• To ascertain, to what extent employers in the construction industry in Sri Lanka are aware of the supposed advantages of effective site plan (SP)
• To identify the perceived productivity benefits realised through the implementation of the above SP practices
• To ascertain if there are significant differences between site plans amongst developed countries and Sri Lanka
• To develop an empirically grounded framework for understanding the perceived relationship between site plan and site productivity

Looking over the construction site in Hambantota, Sri Lanka

The research will contribute to a greater understanding of productivity, particularly in respect of site plans in the Sri Lankan construction industry. It develops a coherent framework for analysis that may be applied to similar studies in other developing countries, particularly in the Asian sub-region. In addition to the empirical evidence generated, this study will be of benefit to Sri Lankan policy makers in respect of facilitating a more effective and efficient construction industry, contractors and clients. Most previous studies looked at productivity by referring to factors such as employees’ motivation. However, in Sri Lanka no one has conducted productivity studies with special reference to effective site plans within the construction industry. Leyon's research fills this gap and also develops new research ideas in the area of construction management.

Leyon was supervised by: Ramin Keivani, Esra Kurul and Brian Wood.

If you're interested in the research that is being carried out in the Department, take a look at our website.

New Research Grant for DREC

Exciting news just in....

We have heard from the Technology Strategy Board that our recent bid for funding has been successful. The title of the project for which funding has been awarded is: a BIM-enabled Collaborative Platform for Innovative Low Impact School Procurement. The project team is led by Willmott Dixon Construction and involves Atkins Global and Scape System Build Ltd as industry partners as well as the team here in the Department of Real Estate and Construction. The total cost of the project is £543k with the TSB providing a grant of £270k to the consortium for 3 years.

Congratulations to the DREC team: Esra Kurul, Franco Cheung and Joe Tah. I had a chat with Esra yesterday to see what exactly they will be doing.

Shottery Primary School - the initial focus for the project (photo courtesy of SPS)

First of all, two handy definitions for you (thanks Wikipedia):

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is the process of generating and managing building data during the life cycle of the building and can tell us important information about buildings and the effect the building itself and how it is being used, have on the environment. Participants in the building process are constantly challenged to deliver successful projects despite tight budgets, limited manpower, accelerated schedules, and limited or conflicting information. The BIM concept envisages virtual construction of a facility prior to its actual physical construction, in order to reduce uncertainty, improve safety, work out problems, establish costs and simulate and analyse potential impacts. The UK government would like all building projects to use BIM from 2016 to keep costs down whilst meeting energy performance targets and other sustainability criteria.

A Low Impact Building is one which is designed to cause minimum harm to the environment. There are many benefits of Low Impact Buildings including: significant reduction in operating costs; lower energy use, reduced carbon emissions when the building is in use; no increase in building cost; shorter construction time; potential income from surplus green energy production and carbon neutral construction. The project will be looking at the development of low impact standardised building designs for public sector clients. This type of building design is partly driven by the need to keep costs down and avoids the problem of developing a bespoke building design for every project.

The project aims to develop a new approach to standardised building design using BIM as a collaborative tool to bring together all the different professionals who have an input in the design and construction process to see what the product might look like before actually starting the project. This will enable all those involved, from architects to suppliers of materials and labour to discuss the design and any changes that could be made to improve the performance of the building whilst keeping costs to a minimum. This innovative collaborative approach would then be continued throughout the project and should close the knowledge feedback loop between construction and design that exists in the majority of building projects.

The project will initially focus on the building project at Shottery Primary School in Warwickshire where the collaborative-BIM approach will be developed. Once developed, the cBIM will then be tested and validated in a second live project.

The key outputs will include:

• A process and product benchmarking framework
• BIM-enabled processes and tools for collaborative envisioning of process and product innovation and learning from project experience
• A collaborative-BIM (cBIM) with the ability to undertake real-time, simultaneous computations of performance criteria such as cost, carbon, time and waste. 

Updates are available on the project website.

For further information on the project contact Esra Kurul.

Dissertations: the final hand-in

There has been much excitement in the Departmental Office over the last two weeks as the final year students have been handing in their dissertations. This really is an exciting event as the dissertation is the largest piece of written work the students have undertaken and is based  on their own area of research interest.

Waiting to be marked - photo by the Ed

Handing in - photo by the Ed

To watch a video of the final hand-in go to the Department of Real Estate and Construction page on Facebook. While you're there don't forget to LIKE us...then you won't forget where we are!

If you're interested, here are just some of the titles that have been submitted this year for the BSc programmes in Construction Management:

• An investigation into the causes of work related stress and whether they vary amongst four main professions in the construction industry.
• A study of site waste management plan implementation and its influences on material waste reduction.
• Has the adoption and integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) enhanced collaborative team working practices on construction projects in the UK construction industry?
• Are UK government policies ensuring an effective reduction in carbon emissions from the current UK housing stock?
• Affordable housing delivery in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Investigation into perception of women and their roles of domesticity and motherhood in the construction industry.

Low Impact Buildings - Research Project

Research Project: Building Information Modelling for Early Stage Low Impact Building Design.
Website: Low Impact Buildings Project

The Department of Real Estate and Construction at Oxford Brookes joined with a number of industry partners to carry out this multidisciplinary project funded by the Technology Strategy Board and the EPSRC. The industrial partners were: Best Foot Forward - sustainability consultants; Zed Factory Ltd - leaders in the field of low carbon design and development; ItSoWorks - cost planning consultants and Design Builder - energy modelling and simulation software developers. The current research was completed in February 2012.

The Issues
Building Information Modelling (BIM) is the process of generating and managing building data during the life cycle of the building and can tell us important information about buildings and the effect the building itself and how it is being used, have on the environment.

A Low Impact Building is one which is designed to cause minimum harm to the environment. There are many benefits of Low Impact Buildings including: significant reduction in operating costs; lower energy use, reduced carbon emissions when the building is in use; no increase in building cost; shorter construction time; potential income from surplus green energy production and carbon neutral construction. The construction industry is under pressure to respond to increasingly tight environmental standards whilst cutting costs and delivering quality infrastructure and it is this complexity that the Research Project addresses.

BedZed - an example of a low impact building, photo by Tom Chance via Flickr

Although there are many BIM systems already in existence, many are expensive, lack the ability to predict the impact of alternative design decisions on multiple building performance indicators simultaneously as the design develops, address the design and construction process in a piecemeal fashion and do not interoperate with other tools.

In order to develop a solution the Research Team identified the following needs: better informed design, especially during the early stages to improve the design of individual and multiple buildings on a development site; better integration across disciplines and feedback on the impact of design decisions to improve the understanding of the relationship between design decisions and environmental impact and finally the need for integrated tools that facilitate the progress of a design from briefing through to concept and detailed design to  actual construction and building management.

The Research Project
The aim of the Research Project was to develop a software-based practical decision support tool to assess the impact of a building at the early design stage using carbon, waste and cost performance measures. A better understanding of the relationship between design decisions and environmental impact means that changes can be made to a building design at an early stage in order to minimise impact on the environment. In order to achieve this aim the Research Team identified the following objectives for the project:

• To establish methods for measuring carbon emissions and waste from construction materials and activities
• To develop an intergrated model to estimate carbon emissions, waste and cost simultaneously
• To develop a decision support tool which can interact and interoperate with other Building Information Modelling software environments

The project used Google SketchUp for the building modelling - this is a free tool and is not unlike lego! The Research Team has developed the Low Impact Development Explorer (LIDx) tool which allows users to easily develop 3D models of developments and immediately see the implications of their decisions on multiple performance measures such as embodied carbon, waste and costs as the design progresses. The LIDx tool extends SketchUp into a BIM tool and it has been designed to interoperate with Design Builder software for energy modelling. A real-time link to Best Foot Forward's Carbon Footprinter software database has also been developed to allow access to embodied carbon data and carbon footprints over the web. The tool can also generate BIM data into the Construction Operations Building Information Exchange spreadsheet format being promoted by the UK Government BIM Strategy Group.

The following video is one of a series showing the use of the LIDx tool (for the full series of videos have a look at the LIB Project website).

So what's next?
A prototype BIM system has been developed and is being used to demonstrate the possibilities of the tool. The Research Team are hoping to find funding to develop the tool further and are undertaking market research in order to develop an exploitation strategy to enable designers to start using the tool.