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Alreshidi, E (2015) Towards facilitating team collaboration during construction project via the development of cloud-based BIM governance solution, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Cardiff School of Engineering, Cardiff University.

  • Type: Thesis
  • Keywords: building information modelling; business process model notation; collaboration; data management; interview; prototype development; questionnaire survey
  • ISBN/ISSN:
  • URL: http://orca.cf.ac.uk/88955/
  • Abstract:
    Construction projects involve multi-discipline, multi-actor collaboration, and during their lifecycle, enormous amounts of data are generated. This data is often sensitive, raising major concerns related to access rights, ownership, intellectual property (IP) and security. Thus, dealing with this information raises several issues, such as data inconsistency, different versions of data, data loss etc. Therefore, the collaborative Building Information Modelling (BIM) approach has recently been considered a useful contributory technique to minimise the complexity of team collaboration during construction projects. Further- more, it has been argued that there is a role for Cloud technology in facilitating team collaboration across a building's lifecycle, by applying the ideologies of BIM governance. Therefore, this study investigates and seeks to develop a BIM governance solution utilising a Cloud infrastructure. The study employed two research approaches: the first being a wide consultation with key BIM experts taking the form of: (i) a comprehensive questionnaire; followed by (ii) several semi-structured interviews. The second approach was an iterative software engineering approach including: (i) Software Modelling, using Business Process Model Notation (BPMN) and Unifed Modelling Language (UML), and (ii) Software Prototype Development. The fndings reveal several remaining barriers to BIM adoption, including Information Communication Technology (ICT) and collabora- tion issues; therefore highlighting an urgent need to develop a BIM governance solution underpinned by Cloud technology, to tackle these barriers and issues. The key fndings from this research led to: (a) the development of a BIM governance framework (G-BIM); (b) defnition of functional, non-functional, and domain specific requirements for develop- ing a Cloud-based BIM Governance Platfrom (GovernBIM); (c) development of a set of BPMN diagrams to describe the internal and external business procedures of the Govern- BIM platform lifecycle; (d) evaluation of several fundamental use cases for the adoption of the GovernBIM platform; (e) presentation of a core BIM governance model (class di- agram) to present the internal structure of the GovernBIM platform; (f) provision of a well-structured, Cloud-based architecture to develop a GovernBIM platform for practical implementation; and (j) development of a Cloud-based prototype focused on the main identified functionalities of BIM governance. Despite the fact that a number of concerns remain (i.e. privacy and security) the proposed Cloud-based GovernBIM solution opens up an opportunity to provide increased control over the collaborative process, and to resolve associated issues, e.g. ownership, data inconsistencies, and intellectual property. Finally, it presents a road map for further development of Cloud-based BIM governance platforms.