Project participants and team members		Robin Drogemuller
John Holland	Nick Windmeyer
Woods Bagot	Peter Hoskins
CSIRO	John Crawford, Robin Drogemuller- Project Leader, Cheryl McNamara, Gerardo Trinidad
University of Newcastle	Rod Gameson, Willy Sher, Peter Ward
RMIT	Guillermo Aranda-Mena
Central Node	Melissa James

This project will use the Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs) as the basis for developing a first draft construction schedule for buildings. It will also provide an interface to Common Point Project 4D to provide a 4D (3D + time) visual representation of the building process. Information about the elements in a building is available at the end of the detailed design process through the IFC data. The information about classes of building elements can be combined in order to plan activities. For example, there are 64 in-situ reinforced concrete columns on a floor in a building. Each of these columns contains reinforced concrete of a particular grade and reinforcing steel. The volume of concrete and amount of reinforcing steel can be calculated from the geometry of the building elements.

1) place reinforcing bars
2) erect the formwork
3) prop the formwork
4) place the concrete
5) wait for the concrete to reach an appropriate strength and
6) strip the formwork.

We also know the resources (personnel and plant) required to construct these elements. A simple plan for the erection of these columns can be built up using this available information. We also know that these columns will normally be erected after the floor below is completed and before the beams and slab above are started. The plans for the various groups of elements can be assembled into a cohesive whole for the entire project using this relatively simple reasoning process. The construction plan for the entire project can then be presented to a human operator to allow them to analyse and improve the suggested schedule. The scope of the project, in the initial phase, will be limited to the structural elements (as provided by 2001-007-C), i.e. beams, columns, slabs, walls and footing systems. Once the viability of the deliverables is proven the project will be extended to cover a wider range of building elements. This project has also provided an opportunity to build a relationship with CIFE at Stanford University through Professor Martin Fischer. CIFE has a long history of research into this area see http://www.stanford.edu/group/4D