Building Safely by Design
Submitted: 13 June 2011
Project contact details:
| Contact: |
Dr. Jennifer Whyte |
| Role with project: |
Project Leader |
| Company name: |
Reading University |
| Job title: |
Reader in Innovation and Design in the School of Construction Management and Engineering |
| Contact email: |
info@comitproject.org.uk |
| Contact telephone: |
07903346517 |
Project details:
| Project name: |
Building Safely by Design |
| Project manager: |
Dr. Jennifer Whyte |
| Project aim: |
The aim of the research is to identify effective modes of interaction between builders and designers in which they collaborate, with the aid of a virtual reality tool as a catalyst for their conversation, to design safe construction processes. Related questions include:
1. Which visual objects are the foci of attention and which stimulate discussion?
2. What types of questions generate most productive discussion and safe process solutions?
3. To what degree do process animations promote understanding and identification of safe process solutions?
4. What linguistic objects/devices (such as anecdotes) promote learning and mutual understanding? |
| Project description: |
Construction is one of the most dangerous industries, with a particularly high rate of fatalities. The Construction Design and Management (CDM) Regulations require designers to minimise the hazards associated with construction at as early a stage as possible. Builders have a wealth of practical experience about the construction process, including knowledge that they have gained 'the hard way', through solving problems that have arisen in related projects, while designers commonly lack practical construction experience. This research, funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), focuses on identifying effective modes of interaction among builders, CDM coordinators, and designers. It uses an immersive virtual reality environment as a catalyst for the conversation between designers and builders concerning safety.
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| Business case: |
To be discussed |
| Ties / Dependencies / Overlaps: |
None so far |
| Proposed funding mechanism: |
Reading University |
| Status of Project: |
In Progress |
| Project deliverables and timescales: |
The project is currently recruiting designers, CDM coordinators and builders to participate in the research through afternoon workshops on Tuesday 28 June; Tuesday 26 July 2011. The team is also interested in organizing bespoke sessions and taking industrial collaborators own models into the immersive virtual reality environment to review, in addition to the research interaction with the basic model. The experiment involves a collaborative session with designers, CDM coordinators and builders engaged in 3D/4D/VR co-discovery, preceded by separate activities: a review of the design (for the designer), interview with the CDM coordinator, and evaluation of the 4D simulation (builder). A questionnaire survey will be used capture feedback from the session.
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| Project sponsors: |
Reading University |
| Estimated resources required: |
Dr. Wei Zhou is the main researcher working on the project, with Prof. Jennifer Whyte as principal investigator. The project is part of the Design Innovation Research Centre (http://www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation) led by Dr. Whyte at the University of Reading. The immersive virtual reality environments are provided by the Visualization Centre, where Dr. Adrian Haffagee is manager, and include a CAVE and Powerwall that will be used as appropriate in the study. There is international collaboration with Technion, where related research is led by Prof. Rafael Sacks.
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