CIB W78 conference

Prof Jennifer Whyte, Dr Akeem Pedro, Ranjith Soman and Alexander Zhou represented the Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation at the CIB W78 conference. CIB W78 – Information Technology for Construction – is one of the largest and most active working commissions of CIB. The scope of CIB W78’s work particularly relates to the integration of data, information and knowledge in the facility’s life cycle with the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This year’s CIB W78 conference was held at Northumbria university in Newcastle, United Kingdom on 18-20 September 2019. This year’s conference had an inspiring line up of academic and industry keynote speakers including Dr Anne Kemp, Prof Rafael Sacks, Rob Charlton, Prof Miroslaw J. Skibinewski, Prof Jerome Lynch and Prof Kincho Law. The team had the opportunity to interact with the editors of two main journals in the area- Automation in construction and Advanced engineering informatics.

Alexander Zhou, 1^st year PhD candidate in the Centre presented the paper Information Exchange in Platform Approaches to Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (co-authored with Dr Long Chen and Prof Whyte). This paper reviews the current platform-based DfMA practices with a focus on information exchange. Alexander pointed out three directions of platform-based design: integrated design practices, modular product architectures and configurable product design. 

Ranjith Soman, 3^rd year PhD candidate at the Centre presented his work on Linked-data based dynamic constraint solving framework to support look-ahead planning in construction at the conference. This work addresses the problem of complexities and interdependencies in modelling dynamic construction constraints by building on the research on linked-data in the construction sector. Ranjith presented a framework for dynamic constraint solving using linked-data and Shapes Query Language (SHACL). This framework can be used to automate look-ahead-planning in construction. This is part of the research funded through Skempton scholarship and co-sponsored by Bentley Systems.

In addition to presenting research from our centre, the conference facilitated interaction and engagement with prominent researchers and academics in construction. There were also interesting debates, and insightful perspectives shared during the conference panel discussion on ‘The future of construction’. The centre was also represented during the CIB W78 committee meeting. Next  CIB W78 conference would be organised by University of Sao Paulo at Sao Paulo on the dates June 2-4, 2020.