| Summary: | The main objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the field of Computer
Integrated Construction (CIC). Total Project Systems (TOPS) is an ongoing research
project at the University of British Columbia which streamlines the CIC strategies. This
research is a component of the TOPS project which focuses on the formalization of
transactions or information exchanges in AEC/FM.
The main objective of this research is achieved by pursuing sub-objectives set as
follows:
• Trace the trend of CIC in the AEC/FM industry and study the related efforts
within other industries.
• Develop an approach for formalizing transactions.
• Analyze a process as an example and define formalized transactions needed
for the process.
• Create a prototype system that uses the formalized transactions to demonstrate
and evaluate the proposed approach.
The research consists of two parts. It uses techniques such as a survey, literature
review, and a case study, to answer the questions of the first part of the research:
• What is the state of the art in the field of formalization of transactions in
AEC/FM?
• How should AEC/FM transactions be formalized?
Answering these questions led us to propose a multidimensional formalization
approach that uses eXtensible Mark up Language (XML).
The second part of the research demonstrates that the proposed approach formalizes
transactions in the way that research suggested in the first part.. For this part, the research
develops a prototype application for the example process, which uses the proposed
multidimensional formalization system. The example process was taken from a case
study done at UBC TREK program centre. The research implements a rapid prototype testing technique to evaluate the functionality of the proposed system for the prototype
application.
The main contributions of the research are answering the questions in the first part, and
the proposed system and its implementation in the second part. Future directions of the
research could be to improve the proposed approach, and developing other applications
that use the formalized transactions. === Applied Science, Faculty of === Civil Engineering, Department of === Graduate
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