Starting point: 

How can computational methods, machine learning, and artificial intelligence be used to enhance sustainability outcomes and optimise value creation in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector?

This topic may include consideration of: computational methods, machine learning, and artificial intelligence insights to help the AEC sector overcome challenges that consider key decision factors around resource use, carbon emissions, waste production, project timelines, project budgets, and project benefits; how manufacturing information databases and systems can be leveraged to inform decision-making across key aspects of sustainable built assets.

Project Summary: 

Modern Methods of Construction (MMCs) are rewriting the rules of buildings – faster, smarter, and greener. With our industry pushing to do more with less, MMCs have never been more essential. Yet, delivering successful projects via MMCs work only when stakeholders collaborate, communicate, and coordinate seamlessly, which has long been the industry’s biggest challenge. Failed startups, structural failures and public scepticism in the recent past, all underscore this. Evidence indicates that Digital Technologies, when harnessed effectively, offer a pathway to overcome these barriers and unlock the real value of MMC. Under this premise, this research intends to uncover common information challenges in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction companies, and leverage digital technologies to tackle them.  

The immediate way forward for this study is to conduct in-depth case studies within ongoing MMC projects, with separate investigations carried out in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction companies, to capture the information management challenges from each perspective. The key outcome of this study will be a digitally enhanced system designed to tackle common information management challenges in MMC projects across the A, E, and C companies. Depending on the insights gained from the case studies, the outcome may manifest as a tool, a plugin, or a structured guidance framework. Validation for the system will be carried out through focus groups with the case study companies, making it both industry-tested and beneficial to the participating firms. 

The research methods employed in this study are firmly grounded in the Australian construction industry, with continuous back-and-forth discussions planned at every critical stage to ensure practical relevance and industry alignment. Through this study, the Australian Construction Industry will gain both a comprehensive understanding of its information management challenges in MMC projects and a digitally enhanced system to designed to overcome them.