Development of an intelligent methodology for integration of communication and construction processes

The need for integration of design and construction is widely acknowledge in the industry. For the pass ten years, many integration efforts, both from within the industry its self and other emerging strategies from the manufacturing sector have being put forward. A study of those strategies and their implementation in manufacturing has provided researchers in the construction industry with inspiration for adoption of those initiatives. These strategies are initiated as the way forward for improving the industry performance through effective integration. However, their effective implementation not only depends on adequate understanding of construction process but also on effective communication and exchange of information between the project team members. Moving from sequential to reciprocal interdependency place increasingly heavy burdens on communication. To make these complex strategies more effective, we need to identify and formalise the specific information flows between design and construction processes necessary to support the integration initiatives. The paper presents IMICON (an Intelligent Methodology for Improve Communication in the cONstruction process) a collaborative research project initiated to develop a formalised methodology to improve communication and information flow within the construction processes. The paper reviews the development in the construction process integration research and rationale behind previous research approaches. It also describes the IMICON aim and approach being adopted and the implementation of demonstrator of the first stage of the research, based on World Wide Web (WWW) technology.