Marchant, David (2015) Capturing and integrating the design brief in building information models. PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, Australia.
Abstract
The activities of briefing (stating problems to be solved) and designing (instantiating solutions) are intimately interlinked – both parts of the same process to develop and procure a product which satisfies a need. There is an ongoing “conversation” between problem definition and design proposal in which acceptable proposals progressively add to, and refine, the definition of the whole solution while at the same time potentially generating further problems to be resolved. At any point in time through this process, the developing whole solution is composed of partial solutions which form the context against which further problem statements are made. These problem statements are indicators for a future desired state of the whole solution. The design process also can be seen as starting before professional designers are involved and continues after they complete their project contribution, therefore retaining design intentions alongside solutions is proposed here as valuable for the ongoing use of a designed product. With these ideas as background, this thesis investigates the hypothesis that data for briefing and design can be usefully correlated within integrated building information data models. To test this hypothesis, the content of 46 actual briefs as well as the help files for current briefing software was coded to reveal generic briefing concepts relative to the data schema defined by the international IFC standard for building information models. The analysis showed that the use of type and relationship entities is one feasible way in which briefing and design can be integrated while still retaining an inherent “separateness”. Several extensions were proposed to the IFC data schema and tested through four prototype software implementations, demonstrating that the extensions are useable without breaking any existing functionality that IFC supports.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Plume, J and Margalit, H |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | briefing; building information modelling; designer; professional |
| Index terms: | implementation, building information modelling, designer, design brief, data model, briefing, design process, proposal, prototype, functionality |
| Subjects: | information systems, modelling and simulation, technical documentation, data science, profession, design methods, design features, project planning, contractual arrangements, scope management |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Digital Applications, Design Practice, Engineering Principles, Project Management, Procurement |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
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