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This paper introduces a building information model (BIM)‐based user pre‐occupancy evaluation method (UPOEM), which is applied in architectural design stage to narrow the gap between inexperienced clients and designers. It aims to improve the communication efficiency.

The literature review studied the related technologies applied in the UPOEM, which includes building information modeling, user activity scheduling, and requirements documentation method. Based on the building information model, a virtual environment involving the end‐users' daily activities was built up. In this virtual environment, the clients can observe how their organization will be accommodated in the built environment according to their daily work routines. A requirements and feedback interface was designed to facilitate the clients to conduct a pre‐occupancy evaluation and store the relevant information into the database.

In briefing and design stages, there is a considerable gap between the inexperienced clients and designers when the clients specify requirements and review the design solutions. In the UPOEM, the user activity simulation model can facilitate clients to obtain a better understanding of the design. The requirements and feedback interface can also help them specify requirements and give comments to the design. Thus it provided an alternative tool to improve the efficiency of the designer‐client communication.

This research established a virtual platform which involves both building information and the user activity information. This platform can be further extended by the integration of more building performance simulation tools. Thus it provided a potential to bring the traditional post occupancy evaluation process to the pre‐construction stage.

The implementation of this method in practice can improve the efficiency of the designer‐client communication, and also maximize the clients' satisfaction during the requirements specification and design review process.

This study built up a collaborative working environment for both designer and clients. It can strengthen the designer‐client relationship during the briefing and design stage.

The user activity simulation and requirements management methods are innovatively applied together to enhance the clients' performance during designer‐client communication.

The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry exists in a dynamic environment and requires several stakeholders to communicate regularly. However, evidence indicates current communication practices fail to meet the requirements of increasingly complex projects. With the advent of Industry 4.0, a trend is noted to create a digital communication environment between stakeholders. Identified as a central technology in Industry 4.0, virtual reality (VR) has the potential to supplement current communication and facilitate the digitization of the AEC industry. This paper aims to explore how VR has been applied and future research directions for communication purpose.

This research follows a systematic literature assessment methodology to summarize the results of 41 research articles in the last 15 years and outlines the applications of VR in facilitating communication in the AEC domain.

Relevant VR applications are mainly found in building inspection, facility management, safety training, construction education and design and review. Communication tools and affordance are provided or built in several forms: text-based tools, voice chat tool, visual sharing affordance and avatars. Objective and subjective communication assessments are observed from those publications.

This review contributes to identifying the recent employment areas and future research directions of VR to facilitate communication in the AEC domain. The outcome can be a practical resource to guide both industry professionals and researchers to recognize the potentials of VR and will ultimately facilitate the creation of digital construction environments.

Many buildings fail to meet user expectations, causing a performance gap. Pre-occupancy evaluation (PrOE) is believed to have the potential to close the gap. It enables designers to obtain end-user feedback in the design phase and improve the design for better performance. However, PrOE implementation faces challenges due to still maturing knowledgebase. This study aims to understand the state-of-the-art knowledge of PrOE, thereby identifying future research needs to advance the domain.

A systematic literature review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) framework was conducted. A thorough search in five databases and Google Scholar retrieved 90 articles, with 30 selected for systematic review after eliminating duplicates and irrelevant articles. Bibliometric analyses were performed using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny on the article metadata, and thematic analyses were conducted on their contents.

PrOE is a vehicle for engaging building end-users in the design phase to address the credibility gap caused by the discrepancies between the expected and actual performance of buildings. PrOE has gained limited applications in healthcare, residential, office and educational building design for two broad purposes: design management and marketing. Using virtual reality technologies for PrOE has demonstrated significant benefits. Yet, the PrOE domain needs to mature in multiple perspectives to serve its intended purpose effectively.

This study identifies four knowledge gaps for future research to advance the PrOE domain: (1) developing a holistic PrOE framework, integrating comprehensive performance evaluation criteria, useable at different stages of the design phase and multi-criteria decision algorithms, (2) developing a mixed reality tool, embodying the holistic PrOE framework, (3) formulating a PrOE framework for adaptive reuse of buildings and (4) managing uncertainties in user requirements during the lifecycle in PrOE decisions.

Effective use of post-occupancy evaluation (POE) data – quantitative physical measurements and qualitative occupants’ perceptions are limited due to practical challenges and research gaps. Although building information modelling (BIM) has enabled a paradigm shift in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries, its use in facility management (FM) is still infancy. Limited research has used building performance data to enable changes to BIM models for the benefit of FM. This paper aims to propose the innovative process to collect and contextualize two fragmented types of POE data sets by filling methodological gap in POE research. Moreover, it presents innovative modelling techniques to facilitate BIM as a more effective platform to visualize such currently fragmented data sets in real-time while enabling a decision-making model to benefit facility managers.

The paper presents a process of capturing cloud-based POE data, both wireless sensor network-based physical measurement data and mobile app-based occupant perception data. Real-time capture and visualization of such building performance data was demonstrated through a pilot data collection. Subsequently, the innovative visualization of the cloud connected data is supported by a prototype game engine-based BIM model.

Cloud-based POE data, both quantitative physical measurements and qualitative occupants’ reported perceptions, can be effectively used in FM practice with the use of innovative data capture and visualization techniques in a beneficial manner for facility operation and management decisions. This paper also demonstrates the ability of BIM to serve as a “single source of truth” to support post-construction building performance data.

While addressing a number of research gaps, the paper provides a holistic approach to BIM-based performance monitoring for smart FM to achieve the ultimate vision of BIM enabled FM. The innovative system is expected to provide a powerful and practical tool for data collection, analysis and visualization for intelligent facility management decision making. This paper contributes to fill an important research and practice gap in the area of next generation smart building management practices.

The UN statistics show that the world’s population is expected to be nine billion by the 2050. As a result, the food production must also be raised to 70 per cent or more. Vertical farming (VF) is an innovative and alternative approach to meet the challenges; however, its management will also be a challenge. This paper, therefore, shares the understanding of future food challenges and Building Information Modelling (BIM) and its application to manage the facility.

A conceptual digital prototype of a VF is developed in a BIM environment using design science. First, the data are collected from literature review and then analysed and simulated for optimum conditions in a BIM-enabled digital prototype.

The results showed that BIM to manage a VF has not been researched or explored yet. However, BIM has proven its numerous benefits to the architecture, engineering and construction and facility management industries, and it is a powerful solution to design and manage VF to solve future food production problems.

There is a very limited research on VF in the literature, and BIM for VF is also not discussed or researched yet. The originality and value of this research stems from both expanding BIM horizons and designing and managing VF.

Sustainable construction practices are strongly correlated with a profitable and competitive construction industry, improved client satisfaction and efficient use of resources. However, due consideration is not being given to sustainable construction practices in Nigeria. Therefore, this study aims to identify the unsustainable construction practices on construction sites, the barriers to sustainable construction and possible strategies to improve sustainable construction in Nigeria.

A questionnaire survey of 50 construction sites was conducted with construction professionals on the sites as the specific target, out of which only 43 construction sites have at least a construction professional present at the site. Forty-three filled questionnaires from the respondents were used for descriptive (mean score, standard deviation and charts) and inferential analysis (t-test and Kruskal–Wallis) in this study.

The study shows that a large percentage (75%) of construction professionals in Nigeria are aware of sustainable construction. The descriptive and inferential analysis showed a disparity in the ranking of the 12 unsustainable practices, 14 barriers and 11 strategies among the respondents. Five unsustainable practices (“negative externalities”, “excess energy”, “unsustainable technologies”, “non-management of health and safety of workers” and “material waste”), six barriers to sustainable construction (“absence of historical data and exemplary projects on which construction professionals can build and learn from”, “lack of professional to handle the task”, “poverty and low urban investment”, “lack of urban and construction policy”, “lack of awareness” and “lack of technical know-how”) and three strategies to improve sustainable construction practices in Nigeria (“cooperation, partnership and participation”, “protection of biodiversity and conservation of natural resources” and “sustainability assessment system”) were found to be significant.

The study offers significant insights into the construction industry unsustainable practices, barriers to sustainable construction, as well as strategies for improving sustainable construction practices. These insights can be applied to other developing countries with an emphasis on geographical differences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the recent studies in Nigeria that explored the context of sustainable construction in the construction industry by providing insights into the unsustainable construction practices, barriers and strategies to improve sustainable construction in Nigeria.

The megadimensional nature of the complex social systems of the twentieth century, and the increasing levels of interrelatedness, present the individual with a bewildering array of information sources and services.

The aim of the research work presented in this paper is to investigate a mechanism that can recognise high level activities (for example, going for a walk, travelling on the bus, doing evening activity, etc.) and behaviour of low entropy people (people with regular daily life routines, e.g. elderly people with dementia, patients with regular routines) in order to help them improve their health related daily life activities by using wireless proximity data (e.g. Bluetooth, Wi‐Fi).

The paper adopted a tiered approach to recognise activities and behaviour. Higher level activities are divided into sub‐activities and tasks. Separating the tasks from the raw wireless proximity data is achieved by designing task separator (TASE) algorithm. TASE takes wireless proximity data as an input and separates it into different tasks. These detected tasks and the high level daily activity plans that are made in a planning language Asbru, are then fed into the activity recogniser that compares the detected tasks with the plans and recognises the high level activities that the user is performing.

The paper provides an insight to how only wireless proximity data can be utilised to recognise high level activities and behaviour of individuals. A number of scenarios and experiments are designed to prove the validity of the proposed methodology.

This paper focussed on relatively low entropy individuals with regular routines and behavioural patterns which can be improved by increasing the level of entropies in behavioural routines.

The paper includes implications for the utilisation in health care environments for elderly people and physically impaired individuals.

This paper provides a detailed and original study of algorithms and techniques that can be used to recognise high level activities and behaviour of individuals by using only wireless proximity data.

This paper focuses on a conceptual methodology for an integrated simulation model dubbed as dynamic simulation modelling system (DSMS) for proactive and optimal decision making within a project management framework. Due to the uncertainties in project environment, the technical and operational functionality of a facility needs to be assessed during development and operation phases of the project. The simulation model is used for optimising the investment decisions vis‐à‐vis evaluation of functionalities on project facilities in early stages of the project. Project life cycle objective functions (LCOFs) are employed as a set of decision criteria throughout the project’s life. The discussion is being extended on the need for setting up an integrated and user‐friendly model to encompass the processes in the entire life cycle of the project. Details of the system are described and a hypothetical case study is used to demonstrate its capabilities. Possible extensions are then outlined. The C++ programming language in association with the object‐oriented database management system is used to achieve the aforementioned objectives.