Change and Exchange Electronic Document Management in Building Design
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Kurt Löwnertz Change and Exchange Electronic document management in building design Licentiate thesis Construction Management and Economics Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Sweden 1998 1 2 ABSTRACT Producing documents using computer supported methods has become common practice in the construction industry, but the management of documents is still to a large degree done with manual methods. Some pioneering users in design, construction and facility management respectively have applied electronic document management (EDM) within their organisations or for projects. How- ever, the introduction has hitherto been noticeably slow. This thesis discusses the benefits of the new document management techniques to the construction and facility management process, with focus on building de- sign, as well as the obstacles when implementing these techniques. The con- struction sector process has some particular properties, differing from other in- dustry sectors, in that a project organisation is formed anew for each project and involves a number of specialists with varying requirements for their company- internal production and management of documents. The main themes for EDM in building design are therefore how to manage the change of information and the exchange or sharing of information between the different organisations. The thesis contains a state-of-the-art description of document management in building design, including reviews of commercial applications, standards and current best practice. Basic techniques on a scale from file-hierarchy-based to product-model-based systems are classified and analysed from a building design perspective. Five cases of document management in practice have been studied. The compa- nies studied are active within different design disciplines and have chosen to in- troduce and use EDM in different ways, with respect to technology as well as the information content that is managed. It is concluded that the different re- quirements can not be met by uniform methods for document management, but that the exchange of documents and their meta-data has to be supported by in- formation standards which need to cover a number of levels from hardware to construction-specific classification. As a starting-point for further development a conceptual schema for document meta-data suited for building design is dis- cussed. The overall result of the research provides requirements for specifying applica- tions, standards and implementation procedures for electronic document man- agement suited to the activities of building design and the interfaces to long- term information management concerning buildings. Keywords: construction, building design, electronic document management, re- quirements, meta-data, standardisation, state-of-the-art, case studies 3 4 SAMMANFATTNING Att producera dokument med datorstöd är numera praxis i byggbranschen, men hanteringen av dokument sker fortfarande till stor del med manuella metoder. En del föregångare bland projektörer, byggare och fastighetsföretag har börjat till- ämpa elektronisk dokumenthantering (EDM) inom sina organisationer eller i projekt. Introduktionen av den nya tekniken har dock hittills varit anmärknings- värt långsam. Denna avhandling diskuterar vinsterna med att använda de nya dokumenthan- teringsteknikerna i bygg- och fastighetsprocessen, med tyngdpunkt på byggpro- jektering, men även problem och hinder vid implementeringen. Byggprocessen har ett antal speciella egenskaper som skiljer sig från andra industrigrenar, främst i och med att nya projektorganisationer skall byggas upp för varje pro- jekt, med ett antal specialister inblandade, var och en med olika krav på doku- mentproduktion och -hantering inom sina företag. Huvudteman för EDM i byggprojektering är därför hur man hanterar och utbyter ständigt förändrad in- formation mellan de olika parterna. Avhandlingen innehåller en lägesbeskrivning av dokumenthantering i bygg- projektering, med översikter över kommersiella tillämpningar, standarder och tillämpning i frontlinjen. Olika grundläggande tekniklösningar, från filhierarki- baserade till produktmodell-baserade, klassificeras och analyseras i ett bygg- projekteringsperspektiv. Fem fallstudier i dokumenthantering beskrivs. Företagen som studerats är verk- samma inom olika fackområden och har valt att införa EDM på olika sätt, både vad avser tekniska lösningar och informationsinnehåll i systemen. En slutsats är att de skiftande förutsättningarna inte kan tillfredsställas med en enda typ av do- kumenthantering, utan att utväxlingen av dokument och deras meta-data behöver stödjas av standarder för information, på flera nivåer från hårdvaran upp till byggspecifik klassifikation. Som en utgångspunkt för fortsatt utveckling disku- teras en begreppsmodell för meta-data, anpassad till byggprojektering. Slutresultatet av forskningsarbetet ger underlag för kravspecifikation av tillämp- ningar, standarder och implementeringsrutiner för elektronisk dokumenthante- ring, särskilt för tillämpning på aktiviteter i byggprojektering och för gränssnit- ten till långsiktig informationshantering för byggnadsverk. Nyckelord: byggande, byggprojektering, elektronisk dokumenthantering, krav, meta-data, standardisering, state-of-the-art, fallstudier 5 6 PREFACE This thesis is the result of four years of part time work at the Royal Institute of Technology, which has been combined with my other work as a practitioner in a stimulating and rewarding way. It has given me rich opportunities to directly transfer knowledge from research to practice and vice versa. The funding of the research has been provided by NUTEK, the National Board for Industrial and Technical Development. Valuable input has also been pro- vided through the European CONDOR project. There are several persons who have supported me during these years. I wish to thank them all. First of all I would like to express my gratitude to my professor and tutor, Bo-Christer Björk, who has guided and supported me all the way until the very last minutes before publishing this thesis. Also, I wish to thank Profes- sor Jerker Lundequist, who was my tutor together with Bo-Christer and who re- vealed to me the essentials of scientific methodology, my colleague and mentor Örjan Wikforss, who inspired me to start researching in the first place, and Rob- ert Noack, who helped me through the final chaos. I am also grateful to all the people from industry, whose generosity with their time and knowledge has made this thesis a great deal better. Finally, my thoughts go to my caring and patient family. My warmest and most sincere thanks to my wife Susanne and my three children Anna, Christian and Mikael. Stockholm, November 1998 Kurt Löwnertz 7 8 CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................................................................ 3 SAMMANFATTNING ................................................................................................. 5 PREFACE................................................................................................................... 7 CONTENTS................................................................................................................ 9 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 11 1.1 Brief background ........................................................................................................11 1.2 What is a document?...................................................................................................12 1.3 Aim and objectives .....................................................................................................14 1.4 Structure of the thesis..................................................................................................15 1.5 Research methods used...............................................................................................17 2 PRESENT AND PREVIOUS DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND FACILITY MANAGEMENT PROCESS ......................... 20 2.1 The introduction of information technology...............................................................20 2.2 Categories of construction information ......................................................................24 3 DOCUMENTS IN THE BUILDING DESIGN PROCESS ...................................... 30 3.1 Design process phases.................................................................................................30 3.2 Information management problems in design organisations ......................................37 3.3 Aims for document management in design ................................................................43 4 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION METHODS.......................... 45 4.1 Six technology approaches to document management ...............................................45 4.2 General properties of all EDM implementation levels ...............................................47 4.3 File-hierarchy-based systems......................................................................................49 4.4 Meta-data-based systems ............................................................................................51 4.5 Document-content-based systems...............................................................................54 4.6 Hypermedia based systems .........................................................................................56 4.7 New types developing.................................................................................................58