BFRL: 2008 Program Information (V 1.1)

Program Manager:
Mark Palmer
Revised: 10/7/2008

BFRL Goal:
High Performance Construction Materials and Systems

Relevant Links

CONSIAT: Construction Integration and Automation Technologies

To develop enabling measurement science, methods, protocols, and knowledge to improve construction productivity with the integration of information, communication, sensing and automation technologies.

During the past 40 years, construction productivity has declined while manufacturing and other industries have achieved significant
improvements in productivity and quality with the application and integration of information and automation technologies. As measured
by constant contract dollars of new construction work per field work hour, labor productivity in the construction industry has trended
downward at an average compound rate of -0.6 % per year . This is particularly alarming when compared to the increasing labor
productivity in all non-farm industries, which has trended upward at an average compound rate of 1.8 % per year. The construction
industry seriously lags other industries in developing labor saving ideas and in finding ways to substitute equipment for labor. [1]

[1] Teicholz, Paul. “Labor Productivity Declines in the Construction Industry: Causes and Remedies.” AECbytes Viewpoint. Issue 4. April 14, 2004.

The construction industry has repeatedly identified the importance of advancements in information, communication and automation technologies to achieve fully-integrated and automated project delivery. Unfortunately, research in these areas has focused on isolated problems, independent of how integration within and across enterprises and combinations of these new technologies can enable major productivity improvements. The FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap , a cooperative effort of associations, consortia, government agencies, and industry, recognizes that the construction industry greatly lags other sectors, such as manufacturing, in exploiting these technological advances. The Construction Industry Institute’s Strategic Plan emphasizes the evaluation of these new technologies that may have application to the industry and the development of methods to use these technologies to overcome challenges associated with the globalization of the construction industry.

The construction industry is making progress in developing common practices for the creation, capture, delivery and the use of basic, digital building information, e.g., 3D models and scanned images for clash detection, object recognition and space management, but the interoperability and integration with construction contractors’ project control and job site automation systems is extremely limited. Due to the lack of proven methods for developing, testing and deploying robust data capture and exchange protocols and the lack of methods and resources for semantic harmonization across intersecting information domains, early efforts to solve these problems have had minimal success. Additionally, the technology developments aimed at bridging the use of building design data, construction job site data and geospatial data are proceeding in a piecemeal fashion. It is difficult to determine how the work from these communities can be put into use in real-world construction projects and to meet the needs of public safety officials and first response teams.

Why is the problem hard to solve? The problem is hard to solve because the methods and measurement science for applying and integrating these technologies are unproven, evolving and in many cases, missing. The complexity of construction projects, the ever changing mix of companies participating in each project and the vast range of work processes for which interoperable automation solutions do not exist make this problem overwhelming for the vast majority of the engineering and construction contractors. Although large engineering companies have succeeded in applying some of these technologies for specific disciplines, particularly in design, the use of these technologies to achieve productivity improvements across the participating organizations and at the construction site has eluded the industry. There are no established measurement methods and metrics by which the technology developments can be assessed for their capability, compatibility, and productivity improvement potential and by which software implementations can be assessed for their ability to interoperate. Further, the measurement science and methods for establishing data model congruency and for developing consistent taxonomies for achieving construction integration and interoperability do not exist.

How is it solved today and by whom? Some construction industry organizations are examining how to change the industry work practices to use aspects of these new technologies. Some are promoting the development of information exchange standards, and others are participating in projects to demonstrate the value of individual new technologies. Research in these areas is focused on isolated problems, independent of how integration across enterprises and in combination with these new technologies can enable major productivity improvements. These efforts are not investigating or developing the measurement science needed to deliver the solution enabling tools to improve construction productivity.

The CONSIAT program will develop enabling measurement science, methods, protocols and knowledge to:

• measure construction productivity at three levels: (1) task; (2) project; and (3) industry,
• integrate construction site metrology data and other field information with project control systems or other processes requesting the information (e.g., job site machinery and workers),
• assess and deliver data model congruency,
• integrate project, product and facility information across design, fabrication and construction,
• integrate diverse information systems,
• produce conformance test suites and test scripts for evaluating construction project data standards and software implementations of these standards,

and by establishing testbeds to evaluate and refine next generation technologies, data representation and exchange protocols and the integration of the technologies for improving construction productivity. BFRL will work in close partnership with CII and the FIATECH Consortium to maximize the relevancy of the projects and the leveraging of resources, and to minimize the time to end-user implementation of the program results.

In FY2008, the CONSIAT program will develop and demonstrate tools and protocols for using 3D imaging technology, geospatial data and building information modeling for progress tracking and discrepancy identification. CONSIAT will establish the Virtual Project Data Integration Testbed and will evaluate the initial set of project data integration scenarios and specifications. CONSIAT will initiate work with research leaders, the National Research Council, CII, FIATECH and other industry initiatives on ways to improve the productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. construction industry.

In FY2009, CONSIAT will develop experimental software for demonstrating information access and exchange services in a Service-Oriented Architecture for use in construction control scenarios. CONSIAT will develop methods and metrics for validating construction project data interchange specifications and for producing conformance test suites for construction project data standards. In partnership with the National Research Council and industry, CONSIAT will drive the development of a national research agenda for advancing productivity and ICAST (information, communication, automation and sensing technologies) capabilities in the construction industry.

In FY2010, CONSIAT complete the trial uses of a new tool for measuring construction productivity at the project and industry levels and will make the tool available for industry use. CONSIAT will conduct site tests of construction control and automation protocols using 3D imaging, building information models and information access services. CONSIAT will develop and demonstrate the use of a real-time control system adapted to construction processes. The resulting methods and specifications will be submitted to appropriate organizations for standardization.

LADAR & Range Sensing Research
• Instrumental in the formation of ASTM E57, Performance of 3D Imaging Systems. Total membership for E57 is over 100 and growing, including manufacturers, users, and researchers.(2007).
• Established an indoor, artifact based LADAR Performance Evaluation Facility (2006).

Automated Steel Construction

• Over 2000 downloads of the Windows version of the CIS/2 to VRML and IFC Translator and thousands of CIS/2 files have been translated with the online version (2007)
• CONSIAT researcher Robert Lipman gave presentations on advancing data exchange in the structural steel industry at the AASHTO/NSBA Steel Bridge Collaboration, Pennsylvania State University, buildingSMART Day, North American Steel Construction Conference, the American Society of Civil Engineers annual conference, and the Georgia Tech BIM Conference (2006-2007)
• Kamat, V.R., Lipman, R.R., "Evaluation of Standard Product Models for Supporting Automated Erection of Structural Steelwork", Journal of Automation in Construction (2007).
• Lipman, R.R., "Mapping Between the CIS/2 and IFC Product Models for Structural Steel", 11th International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering” (2006).
• Lipman, R.R., "Mobile 3D Visualization for Steel Structures", Journal of Automation in Construction (2004).

Interoperability, Integration and Conformance Testing

• Based on the success of the AEX interoperability demonstrations and supporting protocols and test cases, the Hydraulic Institute and the American Petroleum Institute adopted the AEX specifications as the basis for their electronic data exchange standards (2007).
• AEX interoperability demonstrations among multiple software applications at numerous industry conferences, including the American Petroleum Institute (API), International Pump Symposium and the Hydraulic Institute (HI) (2007).
• Published AEX version 2.0 XML schemas for representing engineering information on numerous types of mechanical equipment and the corresponding equipment data sheets (2007).
• Burkhardt, K. R., Dahl, T., and Palmer, M. E., "Electronic Data Exchange in the Pump Industry," Proceedings of the Twenty-Third International Pump Users Symposium (2007).
• Fallon, K. F. and Palmer, M. E., “General Buildings Information Handover Guide” NISTIR 7417 (2007)
• Fallon, K. F. and Palmer, M. E., “Capital Facilities Information Handover Guide” NISTIR 7259 (2006)
• Demonstrated implementations and interoperability with AEX version 1.1 XML schemas at the FIATECH Technology Showcase, Process Industry Practices Spring Meeting, CII Annual Conference and CII Construction Productivity Improvement Conference (2005).
• Published AEX version 1.0 XML schemas for centrifugal pumps and corresponding test cases (2004).
• Contributed to the development FIATECH Capital Projects Technology Roadmap(2004)

Committee Participation

• ASTM E57 (Performance of 3D Imaging Systems) Committees: Alan Lytle (Chair) and Gerry Cheok
• FIATECH project on Automating Equipment Information Exchange. Mark Palmer (Leader)
• FIATECH Intelligent and Automated Construction Job Site: Mark Palmer, Kamel Saidi, Alan Lytle
• FIATECH Smart Chips: Alan Lytle and Kamel Saidi
• CII Breakthrough Strategy Committee: Alan Lytle
• International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) Committees: Robert Lipman and Kent Reed
• National Building Information Modeling Standard (NBIMS) Committees: Robert Lipman and Kent Reed

Tools and Metrics for Construction Productivity

• “Impacts of Automation and Integration Technologies on Project and Company Performance” NIST GCR 06-900 (2006).
• CONSIAT researcher Robert Chapman delivered keynote address on the costs of inadequate interoperability at the AISC eCommerce Roundtable (2005).
• “Cost Analysis of Inadequate Interoperability in the U.S. Capital Facilities Industry, NIST GCR 04-867. This report established the baseline from which all subsequent interoperability-related research is compared. Release of NIST GCR 04-867 caused a ground swell of interest in this important area of research. The impacts of this study on the construction industry are evident through the continued strong demand for NIST GCR 04-867—more than 200,000 web site hits since its release in 2004.
• OAE’s CONSIAT impact studies, published as NISTIRs 6501 and 6763, stimulated considerable interest in the challenges of measuring the costs of inadequate interoperability in the capital facilities industry and the need for a comprehensive, industry-wide estimate of these costs (2002).