Tan Tan

The University of Hong Kong | HKU · Department of Real Estate and Construction

Despite substantial investments into new technologies, the adoption of systemic innovations such as construction robotics remains limited. Therefore, this study investigates the discrepancy between the assumed advantages of construction technologies and their actual performance during practical implementation, using construction robotics as the emp...

The challenge of implementing industrialized construction to achieve sustainable future-proofing healthcare facilities is not only about construction methods themselves but also about how to shift design methodologies. COVID-19 has raised the attention of research and practices in using modular design and construction for healthcare facilities. How...

Purpose – Off-Site Construction (OSC) has received much government and public attention during and after COVID. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an initiative discussed widely to promote OSC implementation. Although many policy promotions have been published, there are many challenges to implementing BIM and OSC in real life and questions of...

Ignoring a large number of occupants and their behavior in the Healthcare Environment Design Evaluations (HEDE) may lead to biased evaluation results and inefficiencies in the collaborative design process. This study aims to propose a VR-based approach integrating dynamic virtual crowds and human-environment interactions to improve participants’ sp...

Embracing sustainable strategies that consider Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) has become a rapidly growing trend in urban development. Continued uncertainty on the sustainability assessment of design could drive a series of indecisive decision-making among design alternatives, further disrupting the potential opportunities toward sustai...

Modularity is an approach to simplify systems and reduce complexity. However, existing research suggests that a mono-dimensional modularity strategy, focusing solely on one dimension, such as product, process, or organisation, might not fully achieve these goals in design activities. This research investigates how combining strategies from various...

Healthcare facilities play a key role in responding United Nations goals, such as sustainability, health and welling. The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has driven much attention to expanding healthcare capacity through advanced digital technologies, such as Building Information Modelling (BIM). Nevertheless, a systematic review of research achi...

The construction industry has been seeking innovative methods to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and minimise environmental impact. Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) presents a promising approach to achieving these goals, and this paper explores its application in the context of earth block design. Earth blocks, as a sustainable and cost...

With the increasing demand for healthcare in China, the retrofit of old hospitals has become an effective practice to upgrade hospitals and improve the healthcare environment. How to fully utilise digital design to retrofit old buildings to improve functionality, reduce energy consumption, shorten building cycles and reduce retrofit costs becomes a...

An ongoing exploration of emerging visualisation technologies for design assistance has been observed; however, there remains a lack of systematic research on visualisation techniques and collaborative approaches to conceptual design. This study uses a systematic literature review to investigate the classification and application areas of visualisa...

Although Digital fabrication (DFAB) has been around since 1952, it still faces low adoption rates and several challenges in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. However, there is a lack of comprehensive research that addresses these issues. This study aims to bridge that gap by conducting a systematic literature review to...

The prevailing issue of low housing supply is caused in part by a lack of skilled construction workers. If unskilled residents were adequately equipped, they could potentially address this issue, expanding and adapting their homes without professional builders and designers. This research proposes the use of discrete components to build on unused c...

With the increasing demand for healthcare in China, the retrofit of old hospitals has become an effective practice to upgrade hospitals and improve the healthcare environment. How to fully utilise digital design to retrofit old buildings to improve functionality, reduce energy consumption, shorten building cycles and reduce retrofit costs becomes a...

Despite the popularity of image-based classification techniques in identifying building materials and elements in building and construction sites, the real feasibility of it accommodating the needs of operation and maintenance (O&M) inspection-repair processes in the real project scale is still awaiting testing due to the vast number of project ass...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has brought significant challenges to building operation and occupant health. In practice, building operators have begun to use various Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, intelligent sensing devices, and manual registration methods to update occupant information and behaviour in different building areas. Bu...

This study aims to use modularity to impact various facets of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) and explore the relationship between product modularity, process modularity, and DfMA within the context of Offsite Construction (OSC). The study fills this gap through an exploratory single case study by identifying perceptual measures of these...

Conventional hospital facility management (FM) focuses on reasonably allocating various resources to support core healthcare services from the perspectives of the FM department and hospital. However, since patients are the main service targets of hospitals, the patients’ demographic and hospitalization information can be integrated to support the p...

The built environment closely relates to the development of COVID-19 and post-disaster recovery. Nevertheless, few studies examine its impacts on the recovery stage and corresponding urban development strategies. This study examines the built environment’s role in Wuhan’s recovery at the city block level through a natural experiment. We first aggre...

The importance of digital twin (DT) has been recognized by many industries throughout the world. In the context of construction, DT and relevant technologies have been implemented at different project stages. This study first clarifies the connotation of construction digital twin (CDT) and argues the subtle but important differences between CDT and...

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) is an emerging concept introduced from the manufacturing sector to transform the construction industry and accelerating “off-site” capabilities. Enhancing the sustainability of DfMA is challenging and requires accounting for various environmental and managerial impacts on the process of manufacture and ass...

Interior design and construction (IDC) is a sophisticated and often prolonged process that delivers a building to occupation. Traditional practice is rather unproductive, involving the work of several different trades crowded in situ and delivered sequentially one after another. To enhance productivity in IDC, offsite practice is receiving increasi...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has brought significant challenges to building operation and occupant health. In practice, building operators have begun to use various Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, intelligent sensing devices, and manual registration methods to update occupant information and behaviour in different building areas. Bu...

Rapid deployment of modular hospital facilities has become an essential action in the COVID-19 response. Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) has played a significant role with governments commissioning emergency hospital projects. Due to the conflict between some DfMA strategies/guidelines, their integration requires further thorough investi...

Integrating building information to support decision-making has been a key challenge in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. The synergy of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is expected to improve information integration and decision-making. The aim of this paper is to identify...

This executive report describes the final outcomes of Challenging Space Frontiers in Hospitals, a collaborative research project involving UCL, Loughborough University and Cranfield University, funded by The Transforming Construction Networking Plus under the UK government’s transforming construction challenge (TCC) and Industrial Strategy Challeng...

The pursuit of modern product sophistication and production efficiency has bolstered Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) around the world. Being both a design philosophy and a methodology, DfMA has existed in manufacturing for decades. It is coming into vogue in construction as a potential solution to the industry’s lackluster productivity a...

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) has been introduced into the construction industry to enhance production efficiency. DfMA is a design approach and evaluation system for improving manufacturability and assemblability. This paper outlines the past and ongoing Artificial Intelligence (AI) development in manufacturing-oriented DfMA, and prov...

Design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) has become a buzzword amid the global resurgence of prefabrication and construction industrialization. Some argued that DfMA is hardly new, as there are concepts such as buildability, lean construction, value management, and integrated project delivery in place already. Others believe that DfMA is a new di...

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) has been increasingly advocated by the global construction industry since it provides methodological procedures for evaluating and improving design for both manufacture and assembly. Many studies have investigated the DfMA principles suitable for different types of construction projects and advocated a wid...

In the era of smart city, semantically rich city information models (CIMs) are demanded as a critical information hub. Roof albedo, a semantic property measures how much solar radiation is reflected, is vital to various urban sustainability topics, including heat island, local climate, green roof, and urban morphology. This paper presents an approa...

In the era of smart city, semantically rich city information models (CIMs) are demanded as a critical information hub. Roof albedo, a semantic property measures how much solar radiation is reflected, is vital to various urban sustainability topics, including heat island, local climate, green roof, and urban morphology. This paper presents an approa...

As demanded by smart city applications, the recognition and enrichment of urban semantics from unstructured spatial big data became an emerging trend for the development of building information model (BIM) and city information model (CIM). Rooftop constructs the essential part of BIM and CIM and loads various new application practices and scenarios...

It is widely recognized that Building Information Modeling (BIM) can facilitate the delivery of prefabricated construction. Nevertheless, the actual practice of BIM faces several barriers. A range of existing studies and literature have discussed these barriers extensively, but two research questions remain unanswered. First, what are the unique ba...