Building process management. Operational and economic methods and techniques for development of technological systems.

Research focus

The Peer review has evaluated this group as Average

The research activities have, as their theme, the innovative definition of criteria and procedures for the management of the building process in its various phases and aspects, answering directly to the orientations that have emerged from the work of numerous CIB Working Groups. The techno-scientific areas of competence are: building design and maintenance, quality control of building systems, interoperability of computer systems used in the decisional, constructive and management phases of building interventions, control of design, production, maintenance and management activities; control and risk management, management of the sustainability of building interventions and their financial and economic management, development of innovative techniques for the design and operational and economic planning applicable to construction works. Management of the building process requires a definition of the objectives to be reached and a clarification of the procedures and means for reaching them. This is reflected in the research conducted into project quality and the qualification of the design process, which acts as a generator of overall operational, performance, technical, maintenance and economic quality. Within this setting, research is focussed: on the formulation of project requisites and their organization and communication on the part of clients; on the definition of procedures for project verification and validation; on the role of technical norms in the guidance and control of the decisional process and management of technical communication between the various operators involved in the design phase; on the organisational systems used to document projects in order to achieve a clear and complete communication of information; on the project design codes used at various levels of the design (preliminary, definitive, executive) and in relation to the various aspects of building quality (quality in the distributive and functional spatial context, in environmental, physical, technological and technical, operational terms, etc.); on the management of the design process by way technical information representations and links. Globally, then, attention is focussed on the study of building quality in the light of the close relationship existing between construction technology and the unique territorial aspects of this country. The complexity of design definitions and the need for their integrated and interactive control has drawn the interest of the group towards researching the interoperable computer tools used to support the design process: from the operational and economic planning; from the maintenance and management of construction; from CAD to BIM; from the interoperable made-tomeasure BIM software capable of “disciplinary” verifications according to the level and phase of the process; from feasibility studies to the preliminary design document; from the preliminary to the executive project; and from maintenance plans to the final construction file through the use of SIGM. 169 The overall quality of the project is kept in check by way of in-depth quality controls of the single technical components, the “building-related” aspects and installations, their arrangement within the building, the application of innovative solutions, and attention to their sustainability. Attention to the quality of the process carries a concomitant attention to the financial aspects of the process, to the procedures for their control, to the economic implications of all decisional, production, organisational, maintenance and management-related operations, and to the research of methodologies for economically quantifying quality. Since every decision generates consequences, the research group is focused on applying “Risk Management” procedures on the building process, through the identification of risks at each individual phase, their evaluation, treatment, and eventual acceptance or removal. In particular, the economic consequences of decisional and organisational choices linked to the production and maintenance of a project, as well as its management over the longterm, have been analysed with these procedures.

Departments

Dipartimento di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Ambiente Costruito (BEST)

Professors

Full Professors
Angelo Lucchini
Maria Grazia Rejna
Associates Professors
Pierangelo Boltri
Angelo Caruso di Spaccaforno
Adriano Propersi
Giovanni Simonis
Researchers
Giovanni Simonis
Leopoldo Sdino