ViBR - conceptualising a virtual big room through the framework of people, processes and technology

The Big Room in construction refers to a large facility supporting the colocation of the entire project team, where some of the critical problems such as delays in decision-making, problems in communication, disparity in design iterations are eliminated, and trust is increased. However, one of the most demanding aspects of this concept is the almost constant presence of the project participants, which may be difficult for small or medium projects. We therefore propose Virtual Big Room, where the concept of collocation of workers will be deployed through virtual technologies. A combination of product and process modelling techniques along with communication and social network tools are proposed to develop the proposed platform that will integrate the entire supply chain through the project lifecycle (i.e. design, construction, handover). (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.