Wednesday 17th November 2004
     
13:30 Registration  
     
14:00

Introduction & Progress Report

  
 

Peter Rebbeck, Chairman of Construct IT

Prof. Farzad Khosrowshahi, Director of Construct IT

Dr. Jason Underwood, Manager of Construct IT

  
     
14:15

Construct IT Knowledge Sharing Environment
  Construct IT/C-SanD Project Team

In responding to the priority for a system to facilitate knowledge sharing amongst members, Construct IT has established an inter-organisational knowledge elicitation and dissemination portal. This portal aims to support members in fostering the creation and facilitating the capture and the rapid and ease of access to relevant knowledge both within and beyond Construct IT. The portal (C-SanD) is a result of work undertaken by the Universities of Salford and Loughborough on the basis that there is little understanding of the best ways to foster the creation of knowledge, less about how to capture knowledge, and even less about how to ensure that knowledge is available quickly and easily to other individuals, companies and projects.

  
     
14:45 IntelCities: Achieving the EU Policy Goal of the Knowledge Society by 2010
  Steve Curwell, University of Salford
Steve will present IntelCities (Intelligent Cities), an EU 6th Framework Programme research and technological development project to pool advanced knowledge and experience of electronic government, planning systems and citizen participation from across Europe. The project in aiming to create a new and innovative set of interoperable, e-government services that will provide information to all citizens and businesses about all aspects of city life via interactive city-wide Internet based applications, will help achieve the EU policy goal of the Knowledge Society by 2010.  
     
15:30

Tea and Coffee

  
     
16:00

Commercial Application of Building Physics Simulation Modelling
 

Paul Carey, Halcrow

Over the last decade simulation capabilities have evolved to the point where the simulation of highly complex processes are possible but these are not necessarily being widely adopted within the construction sector. Paul will describe through a variety of case studies the commercial application and use of various modelling techniques to assess issues such as thermal dynamic, energy and environmental performance and occupant welfare throughout the life cycle of a project.

  
     
16:45 Workshop: The Future of IT in Construction  
  Facilitator TBC  

This workshop will focus on the future of IT in construction with the aim of:

  • identifying prominent current key issues and problems facing the construction industry.
  • discussing how IT could potentially support and address these issues in the future.
  • prioritising those identified issues in order to establish how CIT together with select interested group within the membership could begin to work towards addressing those prioritised issues.
  
     
18:15 Technology Transfer Across Industrial Sectors  
  David Clark, The Virtalis Group  
The high performance engineering sector has established that Virtual Reality can provide major benefits when it is integrated into the day to day design process. Long established British companies such as Bae Systems Marine (formerly Vickers Shipbuilding) and Leyland Trucks have found that they can now design and build complete products without the need for a single physical prototype. Furthermore they are gaining additional value from their CAD by using VR to provide enable it to be used as a basis for data visualisation, health & safety and training simulations and even sales and marketing. David will address how these benefits are now accessible to the construction industry through the demonstration of several real world examples.  
     
19:00

Close

  
     
19:45 Dinner  
     
     

Thursday 18th November 2004
     
09:30 The Digital Project Ecosystem
  John Frazer, Gehry Technologies
John will present the Gehry Technologies Digital Project Ecosystem that has been established by Frank Gehry and Jim Glymph, long time innovators in architecture. The intention is to develop an ecosystem of educational and research institutions, leading professional firms, governmental agencies, and technology providers, with the shared goal of fostering changes in industry practice through applications of digital practice. Other objectives include: Developing sustainable working relationships among parties within the ecosystem, through collaborative educational and research programs with specific, concrete goals. Supporting industry directions that preserve disaggregated models of practice conducive to small, innovative professional firms. Educating the next generation of practitioners for proficiency with these emerging methods.  
     
10:15 What Should You Burn?
  Clive Seddon, Masons

With project and business communication moving increasingly on-line, what is the legal issues surrounding documentation retention and digital archiving and how should construction businesses respond? At its most extreme, the Enron affair demonstrated starkly the consequences of the deliberate destruction of legally sensitive information. In most cases the destruction of soft documentation is inadvertent and uncontrolled. It can however cause serious disadvantage in an increasingly complex and legal and regulatory environment. Clive will seek to identify 10 legal principles to follow to assist directors or managers tasked with policy making and the implementation of policy in this area.

  
     
11:00

Tea & Coffee

  
     
11:30 Driving Technology Through the Construction Supply Chain  
  John Sanders, PeopleWWWare

John will present his experience of working with the construction supply chain in driving through manufacturing techniques such as taking a collaborative approach, just-in-time, etc. Through both positive and negative experiences John will discuss the following issues:

  • Goals: Why it's important to set goals, what they might be, and how they might be communicated.
  • Plan: Using one set of goals as an example, formulate a plan, map the processes, document and communicate, and examine the implementation.
  • Culture: explore the cultural impact at the coal face, and the cultural changes required for improvement.
  
     
12:15 Question Time?  
  Chaired by: Prof. Farzad Khosrowshahi
Panel TBC

This final session of the meeting is dedicated to an hour of Question Time - a session which is similar to the BBC1 Question Time programme. Accordingly, a number of short questions will be put forward by the members of the audience to a panel of "opinionated experts" who in turn shall provide short answers. The debate will also be fuelled by contributions from the members of the audience.

  
     
13:15 Sum up and discussion  
     
13:30 Lunch  

Prof. Tim Broyd