CIB W78 Objectives and Scopes

• To foster, encourage and promote research and development in the application of integrated IT throughout the life-cycle of the design, construction and occupancy of buildings and related facilities
• To proactively encourage the use of IT in Construction through the demonstration of capabilities developed in collaborative research projects
• To organise international cooperation in such activities and to promote the communication of these activities and their results

The following projects were agreed upon in South Africa and a summary status report with potential future actions are outlined.

1. Electronic publishing — Bo Christer Bjork, Ziga Turk and Dana Vanier. The ITCON journal remains the preferred outlet for endorsement by the commission for journal publication of member’s work. In addition, it was agreed to extend the scope of the ITCON site to embrace publication of full proceedings of the last ten years of W78 conferences and of all future events as a matter of policy. Other additional work being proposed is for a database of W78 members to be searchable from the ITCON site and for individual members to be able to add bibliographies of their relevant publications. This work can be found at http://itcon.org
2. International Surveys — Rob Howard. A web site has already been established of a list of interested parties, a questionnaire used for earlier surveys, and a bibliography of relevant publications. The survey is being repeated through a number of commission members in mainly Nordic countries. The plan would be to make a greater effort to encourage more W78 members to repeat surveys in a consistent way in different countries, to post their results in the form of papers to the project web site and for overviews of the respective studies to be reported upon at different times at conferences and through other publications. This work can be found at http://gk48.gk.dtu.dk/~it/
3. Education — Daniel Rebolj. A number of commission members have collaborated on an ERASMUS project submission for funding to support a shared educational programme. There are also plans to hold a Construction IT Education conference in Slovenia from 12-13 September. It was agreed that this would be supported by W78 and publicised through its e-mail list.
4. Reviewing W78 work to date — Robert Amor. An analysis has been conducted of the subjects and themes of all conference papers presented at W78 conferences from 1992-2001. This has been documented as a paper presented to the CIB Triennial World Congress. The updated picture including the South Africa conference was presented at the 2001 meeting. This, along with commentary on the discussions that took place at the conference, were to be documented as the basis for a book that would also include further developed highlight papers from the conference. The target date for completion of the drafting work on this publication was the end of December 2001. This work on the book is to be led by Gustav Coetzee.
5. Liaison with other CIB working commissions — Dana Vanier. The possibility of links with TG29 on Construction in Developing Countries is to be further explored under project 8. The intention would be to explore possible future joint meetings or activities with W102 on Information Management.
6. A future research agenda — Thomas Froese. The work in this area has focused on the preparation of long-term scenarios of future IT support to construction projects. A survey to enable a scenario for 2020 has recently been completed and documented. This can be found at http://www.civil.ubc.ca/~tfroese/pubs
7. A Vision for Construction IT — Martin Betts. A shorter-term (5 Year) vision has been documented and presented to the CIB triennial congress. A presentation of this vision has been prepared and consideration is being made of its use a means of positioning individual contributions to forthcoming conferences, as a basis for continuing challenge and discussion at the conferences, and with all presenters and members being invited to offer single slide examples that further populate the vision presentation. The vision presentation is downloadable from the main W78 web site at http://w78.civil.auc.dk/
8. Implementation Issues in Developing Countries — Gustav Coetzee. The issue of IT development and application with a particular focus on the needs of developing countries is a potential collaborative project between W78 and TG29. Ideas for how this could move forward are currently being explored.
9. Network on Virtual Reality in Construction Processes and Products (NetVR) — Nashwan Dawood. The potential to form a funded international network on VR applied to the construction process to share experiences, shape a future research agenda and provide networking opportunities was supported as an initiative for W78. A current application for funding that was being considered by EPSRC in the UK was seen as a prime mechanism for allowing this project to proceed..
10. Network on Information Standards and Exchange — Ghassan Aouad. An existing international network on information standardisation and exchange (SIENE) was to be encouraged as a funded network that matched a major current theme within the working commission.
11. Future Conferences — CIB W78 2002 is to be hosted by Kristian Agger, Per Christianson and Rob Howard in Aarhus, Denmark on June12-15. The next ECPPM conference is to take place in Slovenia from 9-11 September 2002 and W78 agreed to support the event. The main W78 conference for 2003 has the opportunity to be hosted by Robert Amor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The 2004 conference could be held to coincide with the CIB Triennial in Canada or alternatively a proposal was made for it to be hosted at Bauhaus in Weimar as a joint conference with another existing international group.

Old projects