2014 - Miscellaneous

Due to the workload for the course I was engaged in and some other parallel activities during recent months, there was no time left for more posts on this blog. When I went through my archive this evening, I learned that a handful of drafts from the events in 2014 had not got the chance to be developed into organized texts. Some of the contents have though lost their currency now. Besides, it would not be feasible to work out all those items at this moment. Yet, those events of the 2014 that were supposed to be discussed here are shortlisted in this openning post of the year 2015 in a reverse chronological order:

Poster session at SB14,
photo by Professor Keith Hampson

10/12/2014

During the last lunch seminar of the year at our department, Professor Hans Lind clarified the idea behind an upcoming research work of him and some other coleagues. The central arguement introduced by him was that shifting from public to private procurement in construction projects would alleviate the issues with moral hazards. Generally speaking, diminishing moral hazards could be interpreted as eliminating the incentives for not getting the things done in the way that they are supposed to be done by different parts of a contract.

1/12/2014 - 3/12/2014
I participated in a gratifying writing retreat by Professor Christine Räisänen and Dr. Paul W. Chan held at Chalmers University. Common structures of the abstract and the main text, the funnel principle for presenting the research work and the CARS model were some of the topics that were covered by the lecturers.

28/10/2014 - 30/10/2014
During the World Sustainable Building conference (SB14) held in Barcelona, I presented a poster in the afternoon session of the second day.

23/10/2014
Stockholm Business Region Development & Stockholm IT Region organized an intriguing breakfast seminar about Internet of Things (IoT) at cinema Rigoletto in Stockholm. In the final part of the event, a number of startups in the field introduced their products.


20/10/2014
The seminar, 'Insights and prospects' (Utblick & inblick) organized by BIM Alliance Sweden - was held at Clarion conference facilities at Arlanda Airport. In the begining, Dr. Olle Samuelson briefly covered the priorities in BIM-implementation such as introducing best practices, standardizing (setting and promoting standards), engaging all stakeholders, issues with collaboration, BIM education and BIM research. Dr. Rogier Jongeling's brief words about the seminar was then followed by an insightful talk by Dale Sinclair - Director of Technical Practice (in the UK). He, among others, explained the ongoing activities for updating the RIBA Outline Plan of Work and replacing the approximately 30000 existing CAD manuals with a standard national BIM document. As an example of the challenges with engaging stakeholders, he referred to the fact that 80% of the architects in the UK had not seen the Bow-Richard diagram of BIM-maturity levels by the time...

Bow-Richard diagram of BIM-maturity levels 

The kick-off meeting for the detailed design phase of
the project 'Undervisningshuset'

20/10/2014
I had to leave the seminar to join the kick-off meeting for the detailed design phase of the project 'Undervisningshuset' to be built at the main campus of KTH. The meeting was held at Akademiskahus building where the project manager and participating consulting firms discussed the practicalities of the upcoming design phase.

Dr. Antje Junghans (professor in facilities management
at NTNU) and me at ECPPM (source)

17/9/2014 - 19/09/2014
The 10th European Conference on Product & Process Modelling (ECPPM) in Vienna was opened by the host and organizer of the event, Professor Ardeshir Mahdavi followed by Professor Ziga Turk. Keynote speakers expressed  their concerns about the need for a closer collaboration between academia and industry for realizing a greater impact by the research community on the society. My contribution to the event was an oral presentation of my latest article 'An overview of information logistics for FM&O business processes'.

KTH delegation at the welcome reception at Kuppelsaal, right to left: Professor Väino Tarandi, Susanna Vass, Tina Karrbom Gustavsson and Hannes Lindblad

Project Services Forum by Cad-q

11/9/2014
Cad-q introduced their alternative for a lifecycle-support building information management configuration during the Project Services Forum. The seminar was initiated with an account of information management strategies at the sizable construction project of New Karolinska Solna hospital. The following lecturers contemplated on how to coordinate the use of diverse applications for authoring and communicating building infromation e.g. BIMeye, Naviate, Chaos Desktop, Interaxo, Simplebim and Lumion.

8/9/2014

School visit by Professor Peter Gudmundson

The president of KTH, Professor Peter Gudmundson made a school visit and talked to the staff. Routines for evaluating the quality of education and research at KTH, environmental certification of KTH campus buildings,
KTH's ranking (among the top ten best European universities and the top 120 universities around the world at the time of the lecture), publishing policies and strategies at KTH, internationalization and E-learning were among the topics raised by him.

12/6/2014
Graphisoft Sweden held the event 'Highlight' at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Konstakademin) in Stockholm. Joakim Werning from National Museum explained how he utilized the capicities of the BIM application, ArchiCAD, for scenography of art exhibitions. Creating a virtual collection of the works of arts prior to shiping, examining different arrangements virtually, examining different alternatives for stands, platforms and information texts, lighting design, locating surveilance cameras, extracting quantity take-offs for procurement of materials such as chipboard and gypsum panels and paint were some of the functionalities facilitated by using ArchiCAD, according to Joakim. The talk was followed by a visit to the exhibition.

Design of an art exhibition in ArchiCAD environment

Professor Martin Fischer kindly accepted my request for a selfie
together just before his speech ensuing the conference

20/03/2014
The buildingSMART international conference was held by BIM Alliance Sweden and hosted at KTH. The event was preceded by a number of technical sessions starting on March 16th. Market-based initiatives for operationalizing bsDD, the new concept of FMie (developed in Norway), application of BCF for transferring portions of IFC files, developments of COBie US and UK, implications of different classification systems such as Omniclass and Uniclass, engaging part manufacturers in developing product data templates and fi2-compatible applications such as Solibri were among the topics discussed during the week.