25 May 2004
Buro Happold to Undertake Best Practice Research into Piling Supply Chain
Multi-disciplinary engineering consultant Buro Happold and piling and foundation contractor Stent have been awarded the first satellite project under the DTI-funded Avanti programme into ICT-enabled
collaborative working. Called “Collaborative Piling”, the project aims to identify best practice for data exchange in the piling supply chain.
Avanti is a DTI ‘Partners in Innovation’ programme and a joint venture by Be’s (Collaborating for the Built Environment) Industry Networking for Construction Research, the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI), and Teamwork. Information technologies are now widely available to enable the construction industry to work collaboratively, but their adoption and use by the industry is still very limited. Over the next five years, this programme plans to support live construction project teams, as they collaborate to deliver their projects, by helping them to apply these technologies. It will work through a team of partners representing each stage of the project process who will cumulatively develop a whole lifecycle best practice guide.
Buro Happold and Stent have worked together regularly in the past and plan to identify how they can collaborate more effectively using information and communication technologies. They will focus on one particular aspect of the construction process, ie, the piling supply chain, and draw up a set of best practice data exchange guidelines for piling and engineering organisations working in this field.
Buro Happold research engineer Steve Yeomans, who is leading the project, says: “Through this project, we aim to deliver structural design certainty and reduce some of the risks associated with piling.”
The project is expected to take between six and nine months to complete, during which time the two firms will:
Map the processes involved and identify how they can be improved
Understand 3D data exchange
Develop standard methods and processes (SMP) to make data exchange work better
Implement and monitor any solution resulting from the research on a live project.
As part of the project, Buro Happold will also help trial and evaluate a number of toolkits produced by Avanti, which have been developed to facilitate collaboration via a common data environment and to achieve design co-ordination best practice. Buro Happold will make recommendations about them with a view to improving these processes.
Yeomans comments: “The Avanti programme will benefit Buro Happold greatly, as we will be working with a number of experts within their respective fields. This in turn will benefit our clients in the construction industry, as we will be able to work more effectively with project team members to deliver projects on time and to budget.
“We believe that collaborative working offers great potential for changing the way projects are managed, and we are delighted to be undertaking this research in partnership with Stent and Avanti.”
Note to Editors
About the Avanti Programme
This industry led Partners In Innovation Programme, supported by DTI with £750,000 over three years, is a programme of live construction projects designed to achieve and measure IT enabled business improvements at project level, building on the successful implementation of knowledge the industry has today. The strategy and systems embraced in the Avanti Programme enable the delivery of detailed design production information, fabrication and manufacturing data, project management and construction through a common data environment. This approach is considered to be a world class solution for project management, project delivery and life cycle maintenance.
Further information about the Avanti Programme from: Paul Waskett on 024 7623 6929, or contact @Avanti-construction.org, or visit http://www.Avanti-construction.org
Partners
The Avanti programme is a partnership between: Be - Collaborating for the Built Environment, The International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) and Teamwork. The programme's public funding partner is The Department of Trade and Industry
Background information for editors:
Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976 offering civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, health and safety management, infrastructure and traffic engineering, ground engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, computational fluid dynamics analysis, disability design consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.
Elspeth Wales
Telephone 01225 320 600
Fax 0870 787 4148
Email:Elspeth.Wales@burohappold.com Elspeth.Wales@burohappold.com
