Building Information Modeling and Management

Fundamental questions about management practices are raised by the activities involved in the production and use of long-term physical assets such as buildings and infrastructure. Diverse social groups are involved in the various stages of design, delivery, maintenance, use and re-purposing. How can knowledge be sustained across these different stages?

Information technologies are increasingly seen as part of the solution. The UK government has announced its intention to increase the use building information modelling and management over the next five years. New technologies provide the potential to integrate diverse streams of data about buildings and infrastructure, through a range of CAD, GIS and asset management software solutions. We will be discussing these opportunities, and the challenges, at the 'Engineering Management in the Digital Economy' at the end of this week.

IT and the Management of Projects

Our the last few days, both at the Stanford Center for Research on Global Projects  open house, and up in Stanford Sierra at the Engineering Project Organization Society's conference, there has been a lot of interesting discussion about the delivery of global projects. The conference brings together a small set of researchers with a focus on the organization of engineering projects. The contribution that Ray Levitt and I made to the new Oxford Handbook on Project Management, which explores IT and the management of projects was initiated at the conference two years ago. this book chapter explores the new forms of project management that are breaking the mold of traditional approaches.