The main objectives of the UK Government's Construction Sector Deal are to build better homes and infrastructure projects that are more efficient, smarter and safer while reducing emissions and providing cleaner air at the same time. Over the past few years, some of these requirements have already been successfully addressed thanks to the application of the very latest advancements in collaborative 3D design and digital data management known as Building Information Modelling (BIM) across engineering and construction companies in the UK. However, the remainder of the supply chain which includes subcontractors, manufacturers, fabricators and trades people are still relying mostly on paper-based processes and 2D engineering drawings to deliver projects that have already been designed in 3D. Particularly, the management and installation of reinforcing steel (rebar) which is a significant structural part of all concrete pours on any major project is complex with many parties and stakeholders. At each stage in the supply chain, steel is transferred from one company to another what may result in the loss of material identity and the use of material of dubious or unknown origin, and hence of unknown properties and performance. This requires effective management of the supply chain if construction projects are to be delivered on time, on budget and to the required quality with reliable estimation of the amount of embedded carbon within. Such complexities, combined with the ongoing pandemic, provide a need for digital innovation and optimisation solutions. Therefore, our aim over the next 6 months is to establish the feasibility of a digital management of reinforcing steel testing, tracking and tracing as well as validation/assurance of designed versus delivered rebar in construction that will be driven by the existing 3D models from structural engineering all the way to robotic-driven fabrication and digitally verified installation on site. "Rebar 4.0: Supply chain made smarter" embraces a collaborative approach from all stakeholders in the reinforcing steel value chain to digitise the whole process. It enables digital compliance checking and delivers a true digital twin representation of the built environment for handover.

Despite being one of the main contributors to the UK economy, the majority of construction output has stopped entirely due to the ongoing pandemic. Those projects that are still operational ordered all of their non-essential staff to work from home wherever possible. However, attempting to work on complex architectural and infrastructure 3D designs over the Internet while trying to collaborate with colleagues remotely poses unique challenges not seen in other industries. A major issue experienced by everyone is choppy audio and video while teleconferencing. Adding 3D rendering into the mix makes screen sharing in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) virtually impossible. Even popular service providers such as Netflix were forced to reduce their streaming resolution in order to free up much needed capacity within the network. We, therefore, aim to devise a new solution for remote working and collaboration specific to AEC. Instead of relying on screen sharing which effectively sends a stream of images over the Internet, our solution will rely on remote 3D rendering and navigation sharing. Each user will be able to instantly become a presenter in 3D space with avatars denoting, in real-time, who is working on what at any given location. This will significantly improve remote working experience for AEC professionals while at the same time speeding up the Internet for the rest of us. This solution is being made open source and free to use for the benefit of the entire construction industry in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the extension to this project, we will field beta test our newly developed remote collaboration solution on multiple large construction and infrastructure projects in the UK. The aim is to bring the benefits of reduced bandwidth load to the AEC professionals mostly affected by the need to deliver projects remotely as quickly as possible while also collecting feedback and essential real-life performance indicators in order to then mass deploy our solution for the benefit of the entire industry. In our laboratory experiments, we have already obtained two orders of magnitude improvements in sustained network load when comparing to an equivalent remote teleconferencing solutions with screen sharing. Therefore, we expect similar significant improvements to be witnessed across additional three months of field testing in real-life scenarios with industrial users. Throughout the first phase of the project, we have also identified additional use cases for this technology that were not originally envisioned. These include remote training and health and safety risk management for the benefit of subcontractors, client presentations to review construction progress for the benefit of major stakeholders and most importantly public consultations when reviewing planning submissions for the benefit of the general public.

"Construction projects are infamous for delays, omissions, overruns and often spiraling costs. In line with the Governmental Industrial Strategy Construction Sector Deal, our aim is to improve the performance of UK construction by better, more efficient and proactive rather than reactive project management. We, therefore, propose to build a scalable and repeatable 'plug-and-play' construction management and reporting platform that will be tested on three major infrastructure projects in the UK. This digital project management platform will be accessible via physical site-mounted 'AEC Production Control Rooms' that will display a suite of preconfigured performance metrics using real-time data, facilitating forward planning and collaborative decision making at team, project and portfolio level. A fourth HQ-mounted Master Control Room will enable benchmarking across different projects remotely. Clients, planners, site managers and engineers will be able to track real-time project performance and take action based on insights. These stakeholders will, for the first time, be able to objectively compare _'what was planned'_ versus _'what has been delivered'_. Such a solution will track the status of each construction element (for instance all structural steel elements) from design, approval, manufacture and delivery, all the way to site fitting/completion, and facilitate future opportunities for operational cost savings via Digital Twin capabilities at the national level. A feedback loop will enable predictive analytics such as early risk warnings, benchmarking across different portfolio projects and continuous 4D planning. All information will be set out clearly in both physical and digital space so that the parties involved can either collaborate remotely, or in person within the AEC Production Control Room on site. Some of the barriers to adoption so far include lack of consistent digital and data architecture; contract models to support open and transparent data exchange; and capability at every level of the supply chain, from client (portfolio) to workforce (package) level. Together, our highly innovative and award-winning project team will demonstrate a path forward to overcome each of these barriers, offering a new way of working for the construction industry in an open and collaborative way. Being able to demonstrate the AEC Production Control Room on three major construction projects will enable us to share the benefits, outcomes, and designs with the industry in order to encourage widespread adoption and support an unprecedented quantum leap to a high-performing construction industry."

"Our project will define a new open-source ecosystem developed in collaboration with internationally recognised engineering practices and construction firms, and standardisation support from the UK BIM Alliance and Building Smart International. The project will deliver an open specification and an open-source reference implementation for data exchange in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) but also support further development of paid for services to drive adoption, commercialisation and long-term support of this technology. Our unique approach is expected to streamline the design process for manufacturing, reduce delays and thus directly increase productivity on a wide variety of multidisciplinary projects. This solution will help engage manufacturers in the early design stages and result in the increased pre-manufactured value of build assets across the construction sector. We aim to iron out the manufacturing process at the earliest possible stages of the design phase by streamlining the data workflow so that everyone involved from the consultants to the manufacturers can access the same data from a single source. Accessing required data is currently difficult due different parties involved in a single project using different file formats. Companies also depend on a single supplier for products and services which can lead to financial losses, especially if something is no longer needed over the course of a construction lifecycle. Open standard Industry Foundation Classes aimed for interoperability, but that is not suitable for manufacturing or large-scale architectural and infrastructure projects. To address the above issues, we propose a novel open-source micro-services online framework that will enable the industry to exchange individual object-level changes across various applications, regardless of data format. Instead of exporting a whole file over and over again, our aim is to stream individual design changes to whichever application is conformant with our newly proposed _""AEC Delta Mobility""_ specification. To achieve this, we will: 1. Define a new common interchange schema that is open and shared across various systems; 2. Specify a new technology so that different architecture, engineering and construction applications can communicate easily over the Internet; 3. Validate the proposed specification by creating a working reference implementation that connects open-source Speckle Works and 3D Repo with proprietary systems. This will create an ecosystem with in-built security specification to ensure encrypted data transmission and authorship verification. The entire system will be tested on three live construction projects in the UK with project partners BuroHappold, Rhomberg Sersa, HOK and Atkins."

VISUALISE will develop a single environment integrated data visualisation and analytics capability to effectively analyse, develop and maintain smart, integrated urban infrastructure over the long term. Organisations such as Skanska are responsible for building & managing/maintaining multiple infrastructure assets for local authorities, transport infrastructure operators, utilities companies and facilities such as hospitals, schools. These physical assets are often widely geographically distributed and are managed within closed ‘systems’ based around asset type. Whilst data relating to individual asset types may be available they are not effectively utilised across multiple systems making it impossible to evaluate large scale data patterns. Efficiency improvements that could be achieved by managing multiple assets from a targeted, single maintenance resource capability are therefore not being realised. The VISUALISE solution will address these barriers, enabling data from different sources to be integrated, overlayed, analysed and visually assessed using 3D visualisation and augmented reality techniques. The project use case will be provided by major infrastructure assets in and around Cambridge.

3D Repo (http://3drepo.org) is a multi-award winning open source version control system for the engineering and construction industry. Together with Balfour Beatty, the largest construction company in the UK, and the Association of Interior Specialists AISFPDC, a membership organisation that represents the majority of the interior fit out and finishes industry in the UK, the consortium aims to develop and test the 3D Repo Bid4Free cloud-based platform for Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the UK and abroad. In the construction industry, on average 2 to 3 man-weeks per subcontractor are spent on costing during each tender. For micro contractors working on single discipline tenders, this is a man-day, which is proportionally a very significant cost for them, too. However, such high multi-party expenses are recouped by only those companies that win the contracts. The aim is to pilot a process change in order to digitise the costing of work and submission of tenders for contracts and subcontracts with a reference to 3D data directly in web browsers.

Business globalisation and Internet are redefining the way we work and communicate. Not surprisingly, the demand for geography-bridging web-based work tools and collaborative services continues to expand. Online information sharing, document editing and project planning can indeed accelerate and improve results, especially where multiple stakeholders are contributing towards a common project from different physical locations. For many industries including, but not limited to, architecture, design, engineering, gaming and film, 3D content is an essential part of the business model whenever distributed teams require common access to the assets. 3D RepoTM (http://3drepo.org) is an open source version control system that enables coordinated access to large-scale 3D data. It is currently the only cloud-based architecture able to support maintenance and transmission of 3D information as well as rendering on the scale required by the industry. Based on the results of our academic research we propose significant improvements in the Building Information Modelling (BIM) workflow that supports collaborative development not possible otherwise. Instead of designers and stakeholders sharing massive files in a costly and time consuming manner, they would simply point their web browser to a shared 3D repository in order to collaborate over the Internet. With our system, the stakeholders will be able to seamlessly examine all project stages virtually, even on mobile devices. The objective of this project is to turn these novel concepts into a practical solution that can be applied on a live architectural project as an industrial demonstrator for the technology. Even though the initial development is driven by the built environment, 3D Repo will be applicable to all aspects of Computer Aided Design (CAD) including aerospace, automotive and 3D printing applications. In the long term, we aim to develop the technology into a commercial grade open source solution.