The offsite and modular market is continuing to grow. This book builds on the success of a number of initiatives, including formative findings from literature, research and development and practice-based evidence (success stories). It presents new thinking and direction from leading experts in the fields of: design, process, construction, engineering, manufacturing, logistics, robotics, delivery platforms, business and transformational strategies, change management, legislation, organisational learning, software design, innovation and biomimetics. This book is particularly novel and timely, as it brings together a number of cogent subjects under one collective ‘umbrella’. Each of these chapters contain original findings, all of which culminate in three 'Key Learning Points' which provide new insight into the cross-cutting themes, interrelationships and symbiotic forces that exist between each of these chapters. This approach also provides readers with new contextualised understanding of the wider issues affecting the offsite market, from the need to embrace societal challenges, through to the development of rich value-laden solutions required for creating sector resilience. Content includes a balance between case studies and practice-based work, through to technical topics, theoretical propositions, pioneering research and future offsite opportunities ready for exploitation. This work includes: stakeholder integration, skills acquisition, new business models and processes, circularity and sustainable business strategies, robotics and automation, innovation and change, lean production methodologies and new construction methods, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, scaled portfolio platforms and customisability, new legal regulatory standards and conformance issues and offsite feasibility scenario development/integration.

This book explores the applications of virtual reality technologies in building design and offsite construction. Its focus is on how small and medium-sized architectural and construction practices with limited budgets and time can implement innovation through visualisation creation. Virtual reality technologies, known as empathy machines, offer a productive interaction process for clients and professionals. Gaming and simulation have already proven their efficacy in solving problems in science and business. However, the next challenge is designing data-rich virtual environments that can enhance clients' spatial understanding, simplify architect-client communications, provide customisation options, consolidate quantification, and export data directly to manufacturers' software, minimizing fragmentation across the entire building information management (BIM) lifecycle. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology. With this book, architects and construction professionals can learn how to leverage virtual reality technologies to improve their work processes and enhance client engagement. Whether you're new to virtual reality or an experienced practitioner, this book provides valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of this exciting technology.

This book tackles the complex topic of implementing innovation and the successful application of advanced technology in the construction industry. It provides a practical guide for the transformation of the industry by detailing appropriate and effective implementation methods, required skill sets and structural changes necessary to facilitate the practical and innovative application of technology. The construction industry is behind other industries in its level of innovation and adoption of technology, and is of critical importance to many of today’s global challenges, such as climate change, global warming and resource scarcity. There is therefore a need for smarter and more efficient ways of managing available resources. This book elaborates on how the innovative application of technology could offer hope for the construction industry in it’s imperative to rise to current and future global challenges. It includes the real-world case studies of innovative projects that go beyond the current state-of-the-art academic research, and have improved productivity, quality and performance in the construction sector. This book provides readers from both industrial and academic backgrounds with a comprehensive guide on transforming the construction industry with the efficient and effective implementation of technologies and modern methods of construction.

Modelled on the concept of Industry 4.0, the idea of Construction 4.0 is based on a confluence of trends and technologies that promise to reshape the way built environment assets are designed, constructed, and operated. With the pervasive use of Building Information Modelling (BIM), lean principles, digital technologies, and offsite construction, the industry is at the cusp of this transformation. The critical challenge is the fragmented state of teaching, research, and professional practice in the built environment sector. This handbook aims to overcome this fragmentation by describing Construction 4.0 in the context of its current state, emerging trends and technologies, and the people and process issues that surround the coming transformation. Construction 4.0 is a framework that is a confluence and convergence of the following broad themes discussed in this book: Industrial production (prefabrication, 3D printing and assembly, offsite manufacture) Cyber-physical systems (actuators, sensors, IoT, robots, cobots, drones) Digital and computing technologies (BIM, video and laser scanning, AI and cloud computing, big data and data analytics, reality capture, Blockchain, simulation, augmented reality, data standards and interoperability, and vertical and horizontal integration) The aim of this handbook is to describe the Construction 4.0 framework and consequently highlight the resultant processes and practices that allow us to plan, design, deliver, and operate built environment assets more effectively and efficiently by focusing on the physical-to-digital transformation and then digital-to-physical transformation. This book is essential reading for all built environment and AEC stakeholders who need to get to grips with the technological transformations currently shaping their industry, research, and teaching.

This book significantly contributes the digital transformation of construction. The book explores the capabilities of deep learning to provide smart solutions for the construction industry, particularly in areas of managing equipment, design optimization, energy optimization and detect cracks for buildings and highways. It provides conceptual solutions but also practical techniques. A new deep learning CNN-based highway cracks detection is demonstrated, and its usefulness is tested. The resulting deep learning CNN model will enable users to scan long distance of highway and detect types of cracks accurately in a very short time compared to traditional approaches. The book explores the integration of IoT and blockchain to provide practical solutions to tackle existing challenges like the endemic fragmentation in supply chain, the need for monitoring construction projects remotely and tracking equipment on the site. The Blockchain of Things (BCoT) concept has been introduced to exploit the advantages of IoT and blockchain, and different applications were developed based on this integration in leading industries such as shared economy and health care. Workable potential use cases to exploit successful utilization of BCoT for the construction industry are explored in the book’s chapters. This book will appeal to researchers in providing a comprehensive review of related literature on blockchain, the IoT and construction identify gaps and offer a springboard for future research. Construction practitioners, research and development institutes and policy makers will also benefit from its usefulness as a reference book and collection of case studies on the application of these new approaches in construction.

This Handbook provides the knowledge needed to design and deploy proactive construction project procurement and delivery systems based on essentials while addressing emerging construction industry imperatives in order to boost overall performance. Section 1 of the Handbook provides an overview, while Section 2 provides the fundamentals with fresh insights into the building blocks and trends in performance-linked procurement and delivery, including procurement strategies and commercial priorities, project briefs and management plans, design management, stakeholder management, risk management, ethics and professionalism, team building, information and knowledge management, digital aids, conflict, claims and dispute management, collaborative contracting, relationship-based teamworking and linking to built asset management. Section 3 explores and expands on specific trends, including sub-contractor selection, Building Information Modelling (BIM) in project cost management; off-site and modern methods of construction; 4IR/5IR technologies; and constructing for the circular economy, supply chain resilience and social value imperatives in this domain. While other books describe standard processes or focus on specific strategies such as design and build, target cost contracting or integrated project delivery, this Handbook presents the fundamentals of such processes and protocols together with invited specialist insights into growing trends and imperatives in holistic procurement and delivery. Those who could benefit from this Handbook include academics, researchers, postgraduate students, policy makers and administrators, managers in both public and private sectors involved with planning and overseeing construction project procurement and/or delivery and undergraduates looking for a balanced introduction and useful insights into what is critical to the success of construction projects, organisations and the industry itself.

This book provides in-depth results and case studies in innovation from actual work undertaken in collaboration with industry partners in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC). Scientific advances and innovative technologies in the sector are key to shaping the changes emerging as a result of Industry 4.0. Mainstream Building Information Management (BIM) is seen as a vehicle for addressing issues such as industry fragmentation, value-driven solutions, decision-making, client engagement, and design/process flow; however, advanced simulation, computer vision, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, machine learning, deep learning, and linked data all provide immense opportunities for dealing with these challenges and can provide evidenced-based innovative solutions not seen before. These technologies are perceived as the “true” enablers of future practice, but only recently has the AEC sector recognised terms such as “golden key” and “golden thread” as part of BIM processes and workflows. This book builds on the success of a number of initiatives and projects by the authors, which include seminal findings from the literature, research and development, and practice-based solutions produced for industry. It presents these findings through real projects and case studies developed by the authors and reports on how these technologies made a real-world impact. The chapters and cases in the book are developed around these overarching themes: • BIM and AEC Design and Optimisation: Application of Artificial Intelligence in Design • BIM and XR as Advanced Visualisation and Simulation Tools • Design Informatics and Advancements in BIM Authoring • Green Building Assessment: Emerging Design Support Tools • Computer Vision and Image Processing for Expediting Project Management and Operations • Blockchain, Big Data, and IoT for Facilitated Project Management • BIM Strategies and Leveraged Solutions This book is a timely and relevant synthesis of a number of cogent subjects underpinning the paradigm shift needed for the AEC industry and is essential reading for all involved in the sector. It is particularly suited for use in Masters-level programs in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction.

The Cambridge Handbooks in Construction Robotics discuss progress in robot systems theory and demonstrate their integration using real systematic applications and projections for off-site as well as on-site building production. Site Automation extends the new technology of robotics in building-component manufacturing and construction introduced in earlier volumes to on-site structured environments and on-site automated factories. This volume explores 30 different worldwide systems within a careful analytical framework in which the best conceptual features are extracted in order to help professionals and researchers develop new applications. The analytical approach splits the systems studies into a technical portion and a portion that focuses on parameters related to productivity, efficiency, and economic performance. A benefit of automated on-site factories is the integration of several stand-alone, single-task construction robots into structured on-site environments with networked machine systems to show improvements in on-site organization, integration, and material flow.

This two-volume set constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population, ITAP 2021, held as part of the 23rd International Conference, HCI International 2021, held as a virtual event, in July 2021. The total of 1276 papers and 241 posters included in the 39 HCII 2021 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 5222 submissions. ITAP 2021 includes a total of 67 papers; they focus on topics related to designing for and with older users, technology acceptance and user experience of older users, use of social media and games by the aging population, as well as applications supporting health, wellbeing, communication, social participation and everyday activities.

The 27th EG-ICE International Workshop 2020 brings together international experts working at the interface between advanced computing and modern engineering challenges. Many engineering tasks require open-world resolutions to support multi-actor collaboration, coping with approximate models, providing effective engineer-computer interaction, search in multi-dimensional solution spaces, accommodating uncertainty, including specialist domain knowledge, performing sensor-data interpretation and dealing with incomplete knowledge. While results from computer science provide much initial support for resolution, adaptation is unavoidable and most importantly, feedback from addressing engineering challenges drives fundamental computer-science research. Competence and knowledge transfer goes both ways. Der 27. Internationale EG-ICE Workshop 2020 bringt internationale Experten zusammen, die an der Schnittstelle zwischen fortgeschrittener Datenverarbeitung und modernen technischen Herausforderungen arbeiten. Viele ingenieurwissenschaftliche Aufgaben erfordern Open-World-Resolutionen, um die Zusammenarbeit mehrerer Akteure zu unterstützen, mit approximativen Modellen umzugehen, eine effektive Interaktion zwischen Ingenieur und Computer zu ermöglichen, in mehrdimensionalen Lösungsräumen zu suchen, Unsicherheiten zu berücksichtigen, einschließlich fachspezifischen Domänenwissens, Sensordateninterpretation durchzuführen und mit unvollständigem Wissen umzugehen. Während die Ergebnisse aus der Informatik anfänglich viel Unterstützung für die Lösung bieten, ist eine Anpassung unvermeidlich, und am wichtigsten ist, dass das Feedback aus der Bewältigung technischer Herausforderungen die computer-wissenschaftliche Grundlagenforschung vorantreibt. Kompetenz und Wissenstransfer gehen in beide Richtungen.