Activity awareness as an enabler for communication and network building in construction design teams

Boddy, SC; Rezgui, Y; Cooper, GS; Wetherill, M

Abstract

The paper reports on ongoing research into the facilitation of communication in distributed design teams of the type typically encountered in the construction sector. Ideas around social aspects in such design teams are discussed followed by our previous research efforts as an evolutionary process that has led us to develop in this direction. It is argued that facilitating timely and contextually grounded communication in a distributed environment can help to build the social networks and associated social capital common in collocated design teams but often absent in distributed ones. We describe our framework for providing such facilitation through monitoring and awareness of the information “space” of a construction project. We believe that by leveraging the relationships in the information space, we can go some way to identifying those individuals who would benefit from developing interpersonal relations in their work and further by exploiting those relationships in real time we can accelerate the formation of personal social networks and social capital between those individuals.

Citation

Boddy, S., Rezgui, Y., Cooper, G., & Wetherill, M. (2010). Activity awareness as an enabler for communication and network building in construction design teams. Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 24(5), 430-440. https://doi.org/10.1061/%28ASCE%29CP.1943-5487.0000046

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2010
• Deposit Date: Sep 20, 2010
• Journal: Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering
• Print ISSN: 0887-3801
• Publisher: Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 430-440
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1061/%28ASCE%29CP.1943-5487.0000046
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000046
• Additional Information: Funders : Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)