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Advancements in wireless sensor technology and building modelling techniques have enabled facilities managers to understand the environmental performance of the workplace in more depth than ever before. However, it is unclear to what extent this data can be used to predict subjective environmental comfort. This study aims to pilot test a methodological framework for integrating real-time environmental data with subjective ratings of environmental comfort.

An open-plan office was fitted with environmental sensors to measure key indoor environmental quality parameters (carbon dioxide, temperature, humidity, illumination and sound pressure level). Additionally, building modelling techniques were used to calculate two spatial metrics (“workspace integration” and workspace density) for each workspace within the study area. In total, 15 employees were repeatedly sampled across an 11-day study period, providing 78 momentary assessments of environmental comfort. Multilevel models were used to explore the extent to which the objective environmental data predicted subjective environmental comfort.

Higher carbon dioxide levels were associated with more negative ratings of air quality, higher “workspace integration” was associated with higher levels of distractions, and higher workspace density was associated with lower levels of social interactions.

To our knowledge, this is the first field study to directly explore the relationship between physical environment data collected using wireless sensors and subjective ratings of environmental comfort. The study provides proof-of-concept for a methodological framework for the integration of building analytics and human analytics.

Providing enhanced access and added value to electronic documents (e‐documents) will require interfaces that effectively mediate between the information seeking needs of the users and the information that the e‐document has to offer. A proposed information environment (PIE) to support effective and creative use of e‐documents to fulfil users’ various information tasks and needs is presented. Providing a suite of novel features and interactive tools that can be flexibly combined, the PIE allows users to apply multiple novel ways to intuitively query and navigate information in an e‐document. The querying and browsing processes in the PIE are supported by various interactive and visualisation techniques. Users work within a visually sovereign, integrated environment for information gathering and organising, based on navigable, fractional information objects that are also affiliated with rich metadata and additional layers of value‐adding information. This paper describes the conceptual design of the PIE and uses a representative scenario to show how the PIE is likely to be used for interacting with electronic journals (e‐journals) and the ability of the proposed environment to provide enhanced user interaction and value‐adding.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive framework that covers the major dimensions of performance-oriented office environments including involved actors and performance parameters on the one hand, and the processes and success factors of implementation and change management of such workspace projects on the other hand, with their interaction to be considered as well. This framework can serve as a first guideline and rough “checklist” to support such projects, both in research and practice.

The framework was developed and refined by combining international literature analyses, industry experience from the authors and application of first conceptual ideas to a pilot project. The methodology of the whole endeavor, not only this paper, is a grounded theory approach, acknowledging the intermediate state of prior theory regarding workspace change projects. The framework will thus be further developed with additional case-based empirics in the future.

The framework addresses the design parameters (the content) of (re)developing performance-oriented office environments as well as the management (the processes) of this (re)development including its implementation. Due to the considerable number of dimensions and factors relevant for workspace projects in addition to their interaction and dependency as well as the individuality of situation and stakeholders, the probability of workspace project failure is high. Knowing the parameters of workspace change project success and measures to be tracked and checked during the design and implementation processes of such projects is therefore imperative. Suggestions for operationalizing the relevant factors are made. Equally important is to understand and address individual emotions and concerns of those being involved in or affected by the change situation, and to inform and include them adequately. The comprehensive framework provides a respective first overview.

The framework is conceptual, based on many sources. Yet, the exhaustive inclusion of all research on the many relevant factors is neither feasible nor intended. The paper rather tries to be comprehensive on the dimensions to be considered and to only exemplarily concretize how to handle this complexity in a manageable and practical way. Future research needs to test and adapt the proposed framework, to detail key performance indicators (KPIs), indicators and processes suggested, and to develop an according planning and controlling system.

The paper pictures key aspects for the effective design and change management of holistic workspace projects. KPIs as well as leading indicators are introduced that can be used to measure the various dimensions in an ongoing process throughout all phases of the project, enabling the organization to anticipate or at least rapidly react to problems arising. Accordingly, success factors for managing workspace change are collected and structured along the workspace dimensions including actors and performance.

The originality of this study lies in the approach to comprehensively integrating design and change management parameters of workspace projects, the explicit performance orientation and the inclusion of the multitude of actors (i.e. users, facilities management, Human Resources, ICT). Instead of the design and its implementation only being supported by change management, the organizational environment and its needs – like way of working, organization models, performance priorities and change capabilities – are driving the design, which constitutes a new approach in the design activity.

This study aims to develop a framework for optimizing the spatial requirements of the equipment in a construction site using a geographic information system (GIS).

An ongoing construction project, an existing thermal powerplant in India, is considered to be the case study, and the corresponding construction activities were scheduled. The equipment spaces were defined for the scheduled activities in building information modelling (BIM), which was further imported to GIS to define the topology rules, validate and optimize the spatial requirements. The BIM simulates the indoor environment, which includes the actual structure being constructed, and the GIS helps in modelling the outdoor environment, which includes the existing structures, temporary facilitates, topography of the site, etc.; thus, this study incorporates the knowledge of BIM in a geospatial environment to obtain optimized equipment spaces for various activities.

Space in construction projects is to be considered as a resource as well as a constraint, which is to be modelled and planned according to the requirements. The integration of BIM and GIS for equipment space planning will enable precise identification of the errors in the equipment spaces defined and also result in fewer errors as possible. The integration has also eased the process of assigning the topology rules and validating the same, which otherwise is a tedious process.

The workspace for each activity will include the space of the equipment. But, in most of the previous works of workspace planning, only the labour space is considered, and the conflicts and congestions occurring due to the equipment were neglected. The planning of equipment spaces cannot be done based only on the indoor environment; it has to be carried out by considering the surroundings and topography of the site, which have not been researched extensively despite its importance.

In this paper, we present a proposed information environment (PROPIE) for enhanced interaction and value‐adding of electronic documents (e‐documents). The design of PROPIE was based on a thorough user needs and requirements assessment in interacting with information through well‐documented findings, and a focus group with twelve participants to elicit features that were deemed desirable in future interactions. The design was also based on an earlier work which reviewed the advancements in various user interface (UI) technologies, visualisation and interactive techniques, and a consideration of novel information structuring and organisation techniques that pose important implications for the design of more advanced UIs. Providing a suite of novel features and interactive tools that can be flexibly combined, PROPIE allows users to apply multiple novel ways to query intuitively and navigate information in an e‐document. The querying and browsing processes in PROPIE are supported by various interactive and visualisation techniques. Users work within a visually sovereign, integrated environment for information gathering and organising, based on navigable, fractional information objects that are also affiliated with rich metadata and additional layers of value‐adding information. A set of interface mock‐ups was developed to demonstrate the potential of the environment in supporting the design of a new generation of electronic journals (e‐journals). We report here empirical results from a study conducted to obtain representative users‘ feedback with regard to using PROPIE for interacting with e‐journals. Twenty‐two participants from a variety of academic backgrounds participated in the evaluation. Overall, PROPIE was found to have the potential both for enhancing the user’s interaction with information captured within e‐journals and for adding value to e‐documents in various ways.

Building construction is considered a complex, dynamic and highly hazardous process, which embraces many factors that are potentially dangerous to workers. Many studies proved that the improvement of preventive and proactive measures – dynamically included in the building design, planning and construction – could reduce site accidents as well as increase the site productivity. In this context, process management models and information visualization techniques such as building information modeling (BIM) and virtual reality (VR) seem to be devoted to strongly contribute to the advancement of the current safety management practices. For these reasons, the presented contribution is based on the assumption that a more nuanced approach for construction worker's safety training is warranted and the authors propose a safety training protocol based on BIM-enabled VR activity simulations.

The methodology comprised a safety training protocol based on BIM-enabled VR activity simulations. The protocol addresses three methodological issues: (1) Planning in terms of training typologies and related health and safety contents to be implemented in the VR construction site scenarios; (2) Management regarding the solution to integrate BIM and game technologies to deliver VR training experiences; (3) Administration in terms of definition of standardized rules to define a safety training schedule in a given construction project.

This work contributes to provide a standardized protocol for a viable integration of BIM and VR technologies for construction safety training in real projects.

The VR training protocol was applied to a construction project based in Italy that served as case study for the development of the training sessions' contents and their implementation. This case demonstrated the feasibility of the protocol's implementation and pointed out the drawbacks and limitations on which further efforts need to be spent in order to take the proposed protocol from a prototypical stage to a maturity for its larger-scale adoption from the practitioners involved in construction safety training.

The research gives a contribution to reduce the currently existing knowledge gap regarding how BIM and VR can be simultaneously integrated in real projects for construction safety training by using standardized rules to be extensively reproduced in different construction projects. It uses a customized toolkit with a mobile smartphone solution to administer Safety Training Scenarios which increases its portability in construction site compared to PC-based VR solutions.

Since June 1995, the library automation company Fretwell‐Downing (FD) has been collaborating with a group of Further Education (FE) colleges on a project to explore the use of online distance learning techniques and how these might best be applied by this sector. Working under the name of the LE Club (Learning Environment Club), this initiative sits at the intersection of the administration, authoring, mediation, delivery, learning and tracking processes and as such raises a host of strategic, technological, political and implementation issues. Through integrating elements from previous (and ongoing) EU funded projects such as DALI (Document and Libraries Integration), RENAISSANCE (Integration of High Performance Services for Interactive Vocational Training for European Regeneration) and ICW (Integrated Co‐operative Workspace), together with components from FD's Library Automation package, OLIB, FD is in the process of defining an application framework for the Learning Environment. This paper reviews issues in delivering distance learning while outlining the specific architecture and methodologies employed in the LE project. The implications of such initiatives on libraries and library systems and the changing ‘learning environments’ in which they exist are also briefly considered.

This paper aims to focus on activity-based workplaces, which offer a diversity of typologies and configurations which, instead of being attributed to users, are shared according to the needs of their activities. Indeed, this paper questions the way these activity-based workplaces configure the ways in which individuals and collectives carry out their activity.

To do so, this paper established a two-phase methodology. Three days of observation amid three different units evolving in activity-based workplaces have helped us to identify the uses that emerged from these spatial typologies. Then, a set of two interviews with eight participants have been conducted based on the four dimensions of the situated acceptance model (Bobillier Chaumon, 2013) and on picture elicitation.

The results allow us to understand how activity-based workspaces can be considered as artefacts for the activity that needs to be appropriated to allow the worker to realise his activity.

The results provide an overview of the social and psychological consequences of activity-based workspaces on workers, their work collective and their activity. Thus, the conclusions can be mobilised in activity-based real estate projects, for example, during the design stage.

This research conducted with a situated approach based upon the study of the development of the activity proposes a change from the usual managerial approach about these activity-based workplaces, which prescribe an ideal way of working within the workplace.

This paper proposes to apply the lean philosophy principle of minimizing or eliminating non-value adding activities combined with 4D building information modeling (BIM) simulations to reduce transportation waste in construction production processes.

This study adopts design science research (DSR) because of its prescriptive character to produce innovative constructions (artifacts) to solve real-world problems. The artifact proposed is a set of constructs for evaluating the utility of 4D BIM simulations for transportation waste reduction. The authors performed two learning cycles using empirical studies in projects A, B and C. The construction process of cast-in-place (CIP) reinforcement concrete (RC) was selected to demonstrate and evaluate 4D BIM's utility. The empirical studies focused on understanding the current transportation waste, collecting actual performance data during job site visits and demonstrating the usage of 4D BIM.

In the first cycle, 4D BIM successfully allowed users to understand the CIP-RC process's transportation activities, which were modeled. In the second cycle, 4D BIM enabled better decision-making processes concerning the definitions of strategies for placing reusable formworks for CIP concrete walls by planning transportation activities.

In Cycle 2, three different scenarios were simulated to identify the most suitable formwork assembly planning, and the results were compared to the real situations identified during the job site visits. The scenario chosen demonstrated that the 4D BIM simulation yielded an 18.75% cycle time reduction. In addition, the simulation contributed to a decrease in transportation waste that was previously identified.

The original contribution of this paper is the use of 4D BIM simulation for managing non-value adding activities to reduce transportation waste. The utility of 4D BIM for the reduction of those conflicts considered three constructs: (1) the capacity to improve transportation activity efficiency, (2) the capacity to improve construction production efficiency and (3) the capacity to reduce transportation waste consequences.

Describes how a robot simulation software package was used to perform the simulation, calibration and Off‐line programming of a waterjet‐cutting workcell, used for cutting pelts. The workcell consisting of a robot using an RJ controller and the TP robot language had to cut four parts from one pelt. Describes the difficulties encountered using manual programming and how the robot simulation package solved the problems of accuracy and repeatability. Concludes that parts were cut to a higher accuracy and programming time was drastically reduced using the simulation software.