With growing concerns over human relations with respect to Nature within the Anthropocene increasingly expressed in terms of changing climates, the agentive relations between humans and the world come more sharply into anthropological focus. Cities, often described as devoid of Nature, are currently being recognised as one way to govern the twin problems of managing a changing climate and an increasingly compact city form. There are currently, 700 green (deliberately vegetated) roofs in place in London. This thesis examines the material culture of greenroofs, through a re-evaluation of J.J. Gibson’s Affordance Theory. Materials and plants in combination provide the conditions for agentive action, not only for flora and fauna but for people. I propose that these resulting socio-biological capacities be described as phyto-materiality. This phyto-materiality becomes central to flexible and ongoing classificatory practices which, in turn, enables greenroofs to become incorporated into a palimpsest of policymaking at the local and city levels and facilitates the mainstreaming of greenroofing practice. During a greenroofing project, phyto-materiality becomes central to achieve movement across geographical and organisational boundaries re-shaping the governance of London’s built environment and the working practices of professionals. However the material effects of greenroofing become problematic as imagined future plants become a source of concern for leaseholders or current flora and fauna escape the roof, revealing tensions and fractures in greenroofing practice. The thesis is informed by more than a year’s participant observation within a local authority and a network of greenroof designers, builders, ecologists, policymakers and ecological activists. Greenroofing comes out of an engagement with British environmental discourses and in making greenroofs and greenroof policy-making people remake themselves as greenroofers. For these respondents, phyto-materiality becomes both the ends-in-sight vision of, and the methodology for, ecotopia.

Effective construction planning is essential to the successful completion of a construction project. Although workspace requirements are essential aspects of construction planning, they are often either overlooked or left to the intuition of the construction planner. Emerging computer based techniques are becoming predominant within the construction industry. In recent years, the development of four dimensional computer aided design (4D CAD) has particularly proved beneficial to construction project planning practice. The purpose of this study was to develop a novel computer based method to allow workspace, required during the construction process, to be planned and analysed using 4D CAD techniques. It is predicted that this approach will allow potential time-space conflicts to be foreseen. Based on a revIew of a large body of work, it emerged that specialist trade contractors were one of the primary parties affected by spatial constraints. Consequently, industrial case studies were carried out on UK construction sites to observe workspace planning practices for a general contractor, a groundwork contractor and a mechanical and electrical contractor. As a result, a conceptual framework was put forward to depict software development requirements to assist construction space planning and analysis. Using the framework as a basis, an approach was developed to represent the key processes required to plan construction workspace using a 4D methodology. Based on the proposed approach, a software tool was developed, the Specialist Trade Site Space Analyser (STraSSAn). The proposed tool allowed a CAD based product model to be fonnalised into a product breakdown structure, compliant with the Uniclass standard. The scheduling of construction tasks used a novel interactive 3D scheduling technique. The product model could then be decomposed into dynamic weekly geometry through use of an innovative method of decomposing 4D product geometry. Dynamic weekly site plans could then be generated and various contractors could allocate required workspaces. Potential time-space conflicts could be detected, and the severity of these conflicts could be analysed using a numeric Space Conflict Classification value. Subsequently, the construction process could be visualised in a 4D virtual reality environment, which included for the building product evolution and workspace requirements. Finally, construction practitioners evaluated the implemented prototype to test its usefulness for space planning requirements. It emerged that the implemented tool had achieved the fundamental requirements of the proposed conceptual framework. Furthermore, the evaluators deemed the software as having potential to assist space planning throughout the construction process.

The engineering design process is an iterative and distributed process. It is often characterized by multi-disciplinary teams in multiple places working together, on a single project, using different models and software tools. The current collaboration approaches in AEC industry often focus on integrating and managing multiple models from multi-designers. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is playing a major role in facilitating collaboration. BIM provides an opportunity to electronically model and manage the vast amount of information embedded in a building project, from conception to completion. In the design process, changes in the models are inevitable and very common. They can occur at any stage of the project, from different sources, and for various reasons, which can have significant effects on the process. Versioning is a solution for design change management. Many model versions can be created and distributed among the disciplinary teams. Despite many researches done on the subject and the availability of some software applications that deal with changes in design, the mechanism to cope with the changes among different model versions needs further studies to increase the management efficiencies and ensure designers have an up-to-date version of the model. The challenges of information exchange in project management result from: a combination of the enormous amounts of information generated, the large variety of design systems involved, and data format utilised by different disciplines at various design stages. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard represents a paradigm shift for data and information exchange. The main goal for developing the IFC model is to provide a neutral data format to exchange information among different software programs. IFC models reflect the current state of BIM model. They do not take into consideration the process and results of latest changes among different BIM users nor record the history of earlier changes. This research work therefore investigates how to improve the process of managing the design changes from different disciplinary models. This research developed a collaborative methodology to manage the design changes in different models. It tackles the challenges of the versioning process as a change management approach. This is done through extending the capability of the existing IFC schema to control and manage different design changes in different BIM models. The proposed extended IFC incorporates the changed information of the latest model version and provides the complete history of changes of all earlier model versions. A prototype system was developed in this research to implement and validate the extended IFC and to demonstrate using it to improve the management of the whole design process. The research process involved undertaking a literature review to identify knowledge gaps and challenges in the areas of the (design process, BIM, IFC, and change management). The research also investigated and analysed the IFC standard and identified two key requirements of extending the IFC and implementing the prototype. Further aspects of this research include developing a framework to facilitate a collaborative design, extending the existing IFC schema, designing and implementing the prototype based on the extension, and validating and evaluating the extended IFC and the prototype system. The research concludes that the extended IFC to handle versioning can effectively improve collaborative design. It addressed concepts involving comparing, storing, classifying, extending managing, versioning, exchanging, and sharing of modelling information in a collaborative way. The proposed process of managing design changes covered an important gap associated with current IFC models, which can be incorporated in future releases of the IFC standard.

Building Information Modelling is an approach that fully integrates people, systems, business structures and practices into a collaborative and highly automated process, applicable to the design, construction and operation of buildings. With the United Kingdom Construction Industry (UKCI), the UK Government, as the industry’s largest client, has mandated the use of BIM on all public sector projects by 2016. By considering BIM as an innovation, a total of 104 potential dynamics of BIM adoption were identified from literature along with potential variations by company type and size. Through the application of equal status mixed methods and robust stratified random sampling of 335 respondents, to match the profile of the UKCI, the key findings of the study are: Overall 62% of respondents have adopted BIM, with adoption highest among Consultants and Main Contractors, and lowest among Sub-Contractors, with a substantial increase in adoption following the Government Mandate. Although there is scope for the increased utilisation of BIM for those who have adopted it, 10% of respondents have no plans to adopt BIM. 23 significant dynamics of BIM adoption were identified, with 15 of these inhibiting adoption and 8 supporting adoption. For large companies the government mandate and advantages of BIM as a collaboration tool were the more significant supporting dynamics, while for smaller companies the cost of BIM was the more significant inhibiting dynamic. For Main Contractors, the robustness of existing practices and for Sub-Contactors the cost and complexity of BIM, along with company survival were the most significant inhibiting dynamics. The results suggest that under Rogers’s diffusion of innovation model, while relative advantage is an important supporting characteristic of BIM, compatibility with existing practices Is an equally important but inhibiting characteristic, while observability is not relevant.

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 secu- rity. 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 util- ising 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.

E-business is defined as the use of ICT and internet related technologies to create new ways of conducting business activities. It has been identified as an innovative approach for construction organisations to gain substantial benefits and to improve productivity and efficiency of processes. However, the uptake of ebusiness in the construction industry has been comparatively limited and ineffective. There is a need of a tool to evaluate and review construction ebusiness process execution and performance for further improvements. This research aims to develop a capability maturity model to systematically identify current status of e-business processes as a method of enhancing process efficiency in construction organisations. In order to achieve this aim, a multi-method qualitative research design was adopted. Initially an analysis of existing construction process maps were carried out to establish a conceptual construction process categorisation. Then two rounds of Delphi based expert forum interviews were conducted to verify the conceptual process categorisation. In the second stage of research design, an analysis of existing process maturity models were carried out to identify construction e-business process maturity characteristics. These characteristics were verified through an expert forum and further ratified using three case studies. In the third stage, Construction E-Business Capability Maturity (CeB-CMM) and its user interface were developed using verified construction process categorisation and ratified construction e-business process maturity characteristics. Finally, CeB-CMM was validated by applying it to four construction organisation using CeB-CMM user interface. This research contributed to the existing body of knowledge by developing CeB-CMM and its user interface. Furthermore, this research established a construction process categorisation and determined the construction e-business process maturity characteristics. It is anticipated that the developed tool can be used by construction organisations as a tool to systematically evaluate their current ebusiness process maturity and provide them a pathway to further improve those processes.

The current application of logistics in the construction industry is relatively inefficient when compared with other industries such as retail and manufacturing. The factors attributed to this inefficiency include the fragmented and short-term nature of construction process and inadequate tracking facilities on site. The inefficiency of construction logistics creates inter alia loss of materials and equipment, waste, construction delay, excessive cost and collision accident on site. Meanwhile, several information and communication technologies (ICT) have been proposed and developed by researchers to improve logistics functions such as tracking and monitoring of resources through the supply chain to the construction site. Such technologies include global positioning system (GPS), radio frequency identification devices (RFID), wireless sensors network (WSN) and geographical information system (GIS). While considerable research has been undertaken to develop the aforementioned systems, limited work has so far been done on investment justification prior to implementation. In this research, a framework has been developed to assess the extent of construction logistics problems, measure the significances of the problems, match the problems with existing ICT-based solutions and develop a robust ready-to-use multi-criteria analysis tool that can quantify the costs and benefits of implementing several ICT-based construction logistics systems. The tool is an integrated platform of related evaluation techniques such as Fault Tree Analysis, Decision Tree Analysis, Life Cycle Cost Analysis and Multi-Attribute Utility Theory. Prior to the development of this tool, data was collected through questionnaire survey and analysed by means of statistical analysis in order to derive some foundational parameters of the tool. Quantitative research method was adopted for data collection because the processes of the tool for which the data was required are quantitative. The implementation of this tool is novel given the integration of the analytical techniques mentioned above and the application of the tool for selecting ICT-based construction logistics systems. The tool takes in data such as cost and quantities of materials for a building project and quantifies the cost and benefits of alternative ICT-based tracking systems that can improve the logistics functions of the project. The application of the tool will eliminate guesswork on the benefits of ICT-based tracking systems by providing an objective platform for the quantification of cost and benefits of the systems prior to implementation.

The management of data, information and knowledge through the project life cycle of buildings and civil infrastructure projects is becoming increasingly complex. In an attempt to drive efficiencies and address this complexity, the United Kingdom (UK) Government has mandated that Building Information Modelling (BIM) methods must be adopted in all public sector construction projects from 2016. Emerging from the US Department of Defence, BIM is an approach to the co-ordination of design and production data using object-oriented principles as described in ISO 29481-1:2010. The underlying philosophy of BIM is to ensure the “provision of a single environment to store shared asset data and information, accessible to all individuals who are required to produce, use and maintain it” (PAS 1192-2:2013). A key aspect of BIM lies in the notion of ‘interoperability’ between various software applications used in the design and construction process and a common data format for the efficient exchange of design information and knowledge. Protagonists of BIM argue that this interoperability provides an effective environment for collaboration between actors in the construction process and creates accurate, reliable, repeatable and high-quality information exchange. This UK Government mandate presents numerous challenges to the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professions; in particular, the characteristics of BIM Level 2 remain explicitly undefined and this has created a degree of uncertainty amongst the promoters and those professionals charged with delivering projects. This uncertainty is further reflected in UK higher education; contemporary undergraduate programmes in civil engineering across the UK are, on the whole, at the bottom of the BIM ‘maturity curve’. UK higher education institutions are increasingly being challenged to embrace BIM through appropriate pedagogies and teaching practices but the supporting guidance is emergent and variable. In the case of civil engineering programmes in the UK, the Joint Board of Moderators (JBM) has issued a ‘good practice guide’ as have the Higher Education Academy (HEA) under the auspices of the ‘BIM Academic Forum’. Nevertheless, a clear demand for further research to explore the technical and pedagogical issues associated with BIM integration into degree programmes remains. The research described in this thesis casts a critical lens on the current literature in the domains of object-oriented modelling of infrastructure and the associated implications for procurement and project management. A mixed-methods approach using questionnaire analysis, focus groups and secondary case study analysis was used to enact an inductive research approach that captures a range of data on pedagogic issues and considerations associated with the integration of BIM into the design of a new civil engineering curricular. The findings include recommendations for the ‘up-skilling’ of university teachers and academics, enhancing student employability and the development of suitable learning and learning techniques. A framework for the incorporation of BIM principles, concepts and technologies into civil engineering programmes is proposed. The findings of the research suggest that the first two years of study in a typical, accredited civil engineering degree programme should focus on the technical concepts relating to design from a modelling and analysis perspective. The latter years of the degree should focus on the development of ‘soft-skills’ required to enable effective teamwork and collaboration within a multidisciplinary project environment. Further studies should seek to test the proposed framework in a ‘live’ environment, particularly in the context of the necessity to balance the demands of summative and formative assessment regimes.