PRINCIPLES OF BUILDING
INFORMATION MODELLING
WEEK 2
M. Reza Hosseini
reza.hosseini@deakin.edu.au
WEEK 1???
PROJECTS INFORMATION, MANAGEMENT
CHALLENGES
KNOWLEDGE-INTENSIVE INDUSTRY
CHALLENGES OF CONSTRUCTION
PROJECTS
 Project nature of construction
 Stakeholders
 Project complexity
 Team working challenges
 RFIs
PROJECT NATURE OF
CONSTRUCTION
Project nature of construction
The construction industry product is in the nature of an
investment service, where the customer wields great
influence on the final product and logistics.
The customer selects the contractor and the suppliers of
specialist parts and the material supplier
Efficient supplier–contractor relationships are vulnerable to
disruption in this context.
Project nature of construction
A structure consisting of individual elements in the nature of a conglomerate, termed: “the
temporary multiple organisation”
The (”bespoke“) final product and the involvement of numerous value-adding organisations.
Typically no history of cooperation among the parties.
Temporary effort and unique.
Localised decision-making (local resources and environment).
STAKEHOLDERS
Stakeholders
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-hire-owners-repproject-manager-your-next-project-chrismascelli
Stakeholders
Construction projects: coalition of powerful individuals and interest groups
Stakeholders
COMPLEXITY
Complexity
Most construction projects are based on multi organisational collaboration, where
each organisation brings its own sets of expertise, work practice, experience and
culture.
To work together, the team needs to develop a shared understanding of the
requirements, goal, work culture and management practices. Effective
communication, information sharing is required to identify roles, responsibilities
and dependencies.
Successful teamwork is both knowledge sharing and knowledge creation.
Diverse knowledge groups like tacit knowledge will be hard to document, but
necessary.
The ownership of data, information, intellectual property, recognition of
contribution can cause conflicts.
Complexity
Stakeholders and participants across many different organisations – each focused on its own
interests in the project outcome
Millions of documents and several different document types, including design drawings
Large files (up to a gigabyte or more) and total project data volume in the terabytes
Tens of millions of items of project correspondence, from requests for information (RFIs) and
technical queries (TQs) to extension of time requests
Complex workflows reflecting the interdependencies of participants and stakeholders
High potential for conflict and disputes between organisations on the project team – which is
exacerbated by the challenge of finding the right information when it’s needed
The dynamic impacts of the surrounding world
Complexity
TEAM WORKING
CHALLENGES
Team Working Challenges
Construction is a team work
By their nature, project teams bring together participants from many
disciplines that use discipline specific information formats and discipline
specific modelling analysis and visualisation tools for their work
It is still a challenge today to combine the discipline specific sets of information
and representations to support multidisciplinary access, interaction and
decision making
Team Working Challenges
Report about collaboration of all involved parties
Tier 1 Mechanical Services
Sub-Contractor (Lead)
Tier 2 Mechanical Services
Sub-Contractor
Plumbing SubContractor
Electrical &
Communications
Main Contractor
Discuss the design
Fire Sub-Contractor #1
Architect
Owncloud
Discuss the design
Engineering
Services
Consultant
Fire Sub-Contractor #2
Discuss the design
Fire Sub-Contractor #3
Medical
Gases
Structural
Engineering
Consultant
Various specialist recommendations
Team Working Challenges
Essentially all decision making by project teams is
multidisciplinary and needs to consider large, heterogeneous
data sets.
Furthermore, many parties coming together on projects have
only a casual working relationship because they are from
different disciplines and often also from different
organisations.
They need though, at least some access to each other’s
information, which is typically embedded in discipline-specific
legacy applications.”
Team Working Challenges
People are rationally bounded; i.e. we are only capable of understanding a limited amount
of information. Therefore, we rely on our values and mental model (i.e. frame of reference)
to limit the amount of information that we need to process.
Based on their frame of reference, people only become aware of a subset of the total
information available. From that information, they further filter information based on
what they feel is important. The remaining information is what they use to interpret the
situation and make decisions.
Because of differing frames of reference, different individuals can be exposed to the same
situation and the same information and derive very different ideas about the best course
of action.
Team Working Challenges
CONFLICTS  BEST CASE: RFI
The goal of the Request For Information (RFI) is to act as a partnering tool to
resolve these gaps, conflicts, or subtle ambiguities during the bidding process or
early in the construction process to eliminate the need for costly corrective
measures.
RFI
If every set of construction documents were clear,
unambiguous, and complete, interpretation would be
unnecessary
Unfortunately, this is not always the case
In most cases, the agreement, drawings, and
specifications will not adequately address every
single matter
There may be gaps, conflicts, or subtle ambiguities
RFI
The surrounding world
Inability of parties
Inadequate planning and design
RFI
RFI categories:
 Substitution/Construction Modification
 Clarification
 Additional Information for incomplete documents
 Construction deficiency (construction phase)
 Unforeseen site conditions encountered
https://blog.plangrid.com/2017/11/building-101-what-is-a-construction-rfi/
NEED FOR OVERCOMING THESE
CHALLENGES