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Despite the interest gained throughout the construction industry to BIM and more modern methods of construction, the uptake in the UK residential sector has been slow and hampered by several barriers and misconceptions towards the concept. The unwillingness to change by house builders and residential stakeholders alike is exacerbated by the barriers encountered with costs, training and procurement, which have generated a negative perception of the BIM implementation. This study aims to identify the barriers currently faced within the UK residential sector influencing the uptake of BIM. The study examines further both the drivers and current rate of BIM implementation along with the main barriers to the progress of BIM adoption specifically to the UK residential sector. A survey across a diverse range of industry professionals was conducted to recognize the differences in opinions and views to the BIM adoption in the residential sector including BIM’s barriers and benefits, the UK government strategies, and respondents’ belief about whether BIM can be successful in the UK residential sector in the future. The results reverberated what was found in some secondary data confirming that the main barrier to the BIM adoption in the residential sector is lack of the clients’ demand. The responses illustrated a scepticism towards the UK government’s mandate and its effectiveness whilst highlighting potential solutions offering grounds for the further improvement in the residential sector., Transforming Construction with Reality Capture Technologies, 2022: The Digital Reality of Tomorrow

Maintenance management is an important process in the operation phase of any asset because it can impact the serviceability and useful life of the assets. In addition, maintenance management constitutes a substantial proportion of operational asset costs. Establishing a suitable set of (i) key result indicators to evaluate maintenance management and (ii) key performance indicators (KPIs) to improve decision maintenance making is essential for monitoring primary aspects of maintenance functions. While many KPIs are defined for evaluating maintenance management and subsequently used for identifying root causes of deficiencies, there are potential areas for improvement in defining their relation with KRIs and maintenance decision-making. This paper aims to identify the KRIs and KPIs related to maintenance management by conducting a literature review and exploring the use of performance measures in maintenance management. It also gains an algorithmic perspective on performance besides the existing organisational perspectives. The identified KRIs and KPIs are then analysed and categorised based on their purpose and content. In addition, primary data from interviews of industry practitioners is collected to identify the challenges of measuring maintenance performance in practice. The findings of this study show the lack of quality and reliable data, and automated data collection are the main issues in measuring maintenance KPIs. In addition, it was found that communication with the clients to understand their needs and update the KPIs based on their requirements and objectives over time could improve the effectiveness of the maintenance monitoring systems., Transforming Construction with Reality Capture Technologies, 2022: The Digital Reality of Tomorrow

Adopting robots in the construction industry can address the main issues existing for a long time in this industry, i.e., low productivity, high safety incident and injury rates, and skilled labour shortage. Due to the advancements in artificial intelligence, sensing and computing technologies over the past few years, robot applications for automating manual and repetitive construction activities have been rising. Dynamics, uniqueness, and complexity of construction sites are the primary hindrances for adopting robots in the construction environment. Building Information Modeling (BIM) can assist robots to overcome these hindrances by providing geometric, topological, and semantic data about the construction and built environment in a digital format. Recent studies have attempted to exploit BIM data for enhancing robot navigation, planning robot tasks, and construction progress tracking. This study aims to report the state of the art in the emerging applications of BIM in robotics through systematically reviewing the literature and providing the trend of the studies for utilising BIM in promoting robot applications in the construction industry., Transforming Construction with Reality Capture Technologies, 2022: The Digital Reality of Tomorrow

Site inspection and quality control on construction sites are currently being done manually by experienced workers, which is time consuming, prone to human errors, and in some cases unsafe for the workers. However, the integration of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) equipped with sensors are able to both mitigate risk and improve productivity while providing more accurate readings. Despite advantages of robot-enabled approaches for performing these tasks, they are expensive options due to the costs for adopting the robots, and processing a large amount of data collected by the robots. Therefore, enhancing efficiency of robot operation and data processing is key for promoting robots applications in site inspection. This study aims to develop a method for generating three dimensional point cloud scans within a simulated construction environment, visualizing them in immersive virtual reality (VR) for collaborative review and comparing the “as-built” environment with the “as-designed” model. This study uses the Gazebo as a robot simulator, and VREX as a virtual reality platform. A case study was developed in a simulated environment to provide a proof of concept for the usage of robots and VR in regards to inspection of the built environment, and demonstrate the applicability of the developed method. This research provides an insight into the applications of VR for the robot-enabled site inspection, and opens the topic for further research in integrating robot-generated data with other advanced technologies., Transforming Construction with Reality Capture Technologies, 2022: The Digital Reality of Tomorrow

The construction industry has been severely affected by COVID-19 restrictionsresulting in several challenges in form of supply chain disruptions, performance loss, and limited workforce interactions. The construction industry initially needs to understand and quantify the impacts of COVID-19 on each aspect of the industry. Simulation techniques are powerful tools for this purpose, which enable modellers to run construction projects virtually and assess their performance under different circumstances, scenarios or settings. In this paper, a hybrid simulation framework is developed using agent-based modelling (ABM) and Monte Carlo simulation techniques (MCS) to evaluate the impact of the spread of COVID-19 on the performance of construction projects. The proposed simulation framework enables the construction modellers to capture the interactions between construction workers effectively and to determine the impact of restrictions on the overall project performance. It also helps practitioners in the post-COVID-19 era by testing multiple virus spread scenarios on construction sites and minimize the adverse impacts of restrictions on the project performance.

Communication is one of the key success factors for every construction project. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on communication was significant, which is likely to last in the post-COVID era. The main objective of this research is to build on previous studies and elucidate the team effectiveness and communication in the construction industry which highlights the causes of poor communication given the impacts from COVID-19. This research made use of both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect primary raw data through a questionnaire and secondary data from literature. Upon analysis of primary data, it was found that there is a distinct lack of social relationship building, as this formed the most significant causative factor for communication failure. Some recommendations were provided to enhance communication and conduct future research in this area, which could benefit both practitioners and researchers

Within the construction industry, Health & Safety (H&S) is one of the leading concerns. Although a significant amount of H&S data is collected, they are not being used effectively for decision making. One of the main issues with using H&S data is that they are generated in an unstructured format, requiring time and effort to transform the data into useful information. Thus, this research aims to develop a cloud-based application to collect structured H&S field data from live construction sites. A prototype was developed using Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft SharePoint cloud-based storage to demonstrate the practicality of the application. In this application, the structured data is automatically analysed against the required ISO 45001 H&S outputs. To enable informed and decisive decisions, real-time data analytics dashboards are created by Microsoft Power BI. The resultant analytics provides valuable insight into the safety climate of live construction sites.