Agent-based Collaborative Working in Construction: Understanding and Modelling Design Knowledge, Construction Management Practice and Activities for Process Automation

Abstract

This paper uses the open systems metaphor to propose advanced information and communications technology (ICT) and distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) techniques that would enhance distributed collaborative working in construction organisations. The metaphor views a construction organisation as a group of cooperating (and sometimes competitive) entities/units that work together to achieve certain individual and cooperative goals of the collaborating entities. In a construction context this translates to achieving design, construction, and product delivery goals. However, while current approaches to modelling problem solving in construction focus on separate views of the product and process components, these models do not capture the actual work practices and social contexts within which construction products are designed, constructed and delivered. The paper contributes to address the existing gap by discussing how the multi-agent paradigm (a DAI technique) can be used to model distributed organisational interactions, and achieve good coordination and communication between distributed project teams. It highlights the research issues and charts some directions for agent and multi-agent theories and applications research in construction.