Extended Production Integration for Construction (EPIC): An integration system for building construction

The primary goal of this product integration study was to facilitate collaboration and data exchange among participants on construction projects. The implementations that are based on information standards have often adopted closely coupled collaborations. The project participants collaborate at a higher detail level and with fine granularity. However the diversified construction industry consists of businesses that vary in size and ability of adapting information technology. It is difficult to take a top down method and require participants to conform universally accepted standards for the details of their operation.; The Extended Production Integration for Construction (EPIC) is a loosely coupled integration system with the support of a viable collaboration mechanism. We examined the basic elements of construction projects and the typical relationship between project participants and their proper representation in a computer system. A conceptual model for construction project was proposed based on the study of events, contract conditions and their impacts on the collaborations and interactions among participants. Basic components of the model include actor, roles, processes, and information objects. Events were identified as the major issue that the system needs to consider in order to conduct the collaboration work. An attempt was made to convert contract conditions into enforceable rules in a computer system.; A prototype system based on the proposed model was developed with Java, CORBA and UML. A case study of making change orders was used to demonstrate the functionality of the EPIC system. The factors that have impacts of the efficiency of the system were studied through sensitivity analysis. A comprehensive simulation with scenarios was designed to discover any potential problems in the technical solutions specifically designed for the system.