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Projects as Interventions in Infrastructure Systems‐of‐Systems
... The idea of a project is understood in relation to surrounding organisational courses of actions, future plans, standard operating procedures, traditions and norms (Engwall 2003, Cicmil and Hodgson 2006, Martinsuo and Geraldi 2020, but with relatively little attention to the materiality of the intervention into wider engineered systems (see Whyte et al. 2019, Whyte and, and remarkably little conceptualization of its relationship with natural systems and habitats. We argue that there is an urgency to further shift the mindset away from conceiving of projects as solely a social or technological endeavour, with success measured in terms of cost, quality and schedule to understand them as intervention into nature. ...
... The challenges of projects as interventions have previously been described as a modelling challenge (Whyte et al. 2019, Whyte et al. 2020: one of integrating different kinds of engineering models; modelling across scales; and generating results in time to inform decisions while addressing emergent behaviors (Whyte et al. 2019). In extending this line of thinking to consider interventions into nature, in this essay we see such modelling activities as vitally important to understanding the behaviors of both natural and technological systems, but we emphasize the more fundamental mindset shift needed to inform judgements (e.g., about which systems to model). ...
... The challenges of projects as interventions have previously been described as a modelling challenge (Whyte et al. 2019, Whyte et al. 2020: one of integrating different kinds of engineering models; modelling across scales; and generating results in time to inform decisions while addressing emergent behaviors (Whyte et al. 2019). In extending this line of thinking to consider interventions into nature, in this essay we see such modelling activities as vitally important to understanding the behaviors of both natural and technological systems, but we emphasize the more fundamental mindset shift needed to inform judgements (e.g., about which systems to model). ...
The project scholarship community needs to revisit how it conceptualizes a ‘project’ to understand it as an intervention into nature: intervening in both existing situations and uncertain futures. Taking a post-rationalistic approach to the future, in this essay we set out how we conceive of projects as interventions, and the important implications of this for practice and scholarship. While there are promising recent developments, there is also an urgency to further shift the mindset away from conceiving of projects as solely a social or technological endeavour, with success measured in terms of cost, quality and schedule; toward a broader outcome focus, with concern for both the natural resources used and the positive and negative impacts on places and people across time. This has implications for the skills needed by practitioners and their training, for the kind of projects that are conceived and delivered, and for our scholarship community and its agendas for further research.
... Therefore, we can discern a tension between short-term sensemaking of data aimed at understanding how we use the built environment and long-term future-oriented grand challenges to integrate processes, data, and stakeholders across scales to inform design and intervention strategies. Addressing these grand challenges have prompted calls for moving away from project-bound methodologies to those where developed models span organizational and jurisdictional units [21]. Rabeneck [6] argues that any understanding of (building) performance demands a systems perspective to better articulate needs within a given context. ...
... Rabeneck [6] argues that any understanding of (building) performance demands a systems perspective to better articulate needs within a given context. For example, a systems approach to designing and delivering large infrastructure projects is seen as a step toward understanding system complexity through recognizing interdependencies and consequences of various proposals [21]. In any instance, it is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain the traditional compartmentalized practices, but it is becoming imperative to promote conversations between the allied built environment disciplines to avoid single-issue dominance that could lead to unintended consequences, furthered by partially informed policies [5]. ...
What is the future of virtual reality (VR) in the built environment? As work becomes increasingly distributed across remote and hybrid forms of organizing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to rethink how we use the set of collaborative technologies to move toward a sustainable world. We propose a new vision of VR as a discipline-agnostic platform for an interdisciplinary integration of the allied design, social, and environmental disciplines to address emerging challenges across the building sectors. We build this contribution through the following steps. First, we contextualize VR technologies within the changing digital landscape and underlying tensions in the built environment practices. Second, we characterize the difficulties that have arisen in using them to address challenges, illustrating our argument with leading examples. Third, we conceptualize VR configurations and explore underlying assumptions for their use across disciplinary scenarios. Fourth, we propose a vision of VR as a discipline-agnostic platform that can support built environment users in visualizing preferred futures. We conclude by providing directions for research and practice.
... However, research points out that responding to the climate challenge is far more complex, or a "super-wicked" problem that defies simplistic technological solutions and often prioritizes shortterm goals with competing priorities (Levin et al., 2012;Rabeneck, 2008). Achieving a truly sustainable built environment is much more complex, calling for approaches that transcend any single discipline and move away from project-bound methodologies to those where developed models span organizational and jurisdictional units (Whyte et al., 2019). As Rabeneck (2008) argues, any understanding of asset performance demands a systems perspective to better articulate needs within a given context. ...
Within the overarching theme of “Managing the Digital Transformation of Construction Industry” the 23rd International Conference on Construction Applications of Virtual Reality (CONVR 2023) presented 123 high-quality contributions on the topics of: Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR), Building Information Modeling (BIM), Simulation and Automation, Computer Vision, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Linked Data, Semantic Web, Blockchain, Digital Twins, Health & Safety and Construction site management, Green buildings, Occupant-centric design and operation, Internet of Everything. The editors trust that this publication can stimulate and inspire academics, scholars and industry experts in the field, driving innovation, growth and global collaboration among researchers and stakeholders.
... To recognise the role of projects as interventions into wider technological, societal and natural contexts (Grafius et al., 2017;Whyte et al., 2019;Whyte and Davies, 2021), with predictable and unpredictable stresses and shocks (Naderpajouh et al., 2020), project managers and leaders need to focus on different indicators of project success. Recent studies show this shift is underway in the project studies literatures. ...
This chapter argues a major barrier; perhaps, the major barrier to transformation is the organisation of the construction firm. Many of the barriers faced at the project level have their source and flow from the way that construction firms are organised. The historic process to project and construction management has been to employ institutional guidelines to provide routinised and standardised approaches to project management in teaching and research. There has been performance improvement in construction, much of which has arisen through product development and prefabrication. The interventions involve technical and management inputs to enable systems integration on projects. Non‐organising occurs in project teams within the actors and between the actors because of the transactional business model. Improving the organisation of the construction firm is a key element to supporting effective project organising and needs to be one key element of transforming construction through improving performance.
Systems integration methods aim to keep focus on the project outcomes or ends. This chapter argues that an outcome‐focused approach to systems integration has distinctive features in construction project organising for the three reasons that construction projects are: interventions, evolving, and heterogeneous. Systems integration did not originate in construction, but was developed through the work of the Ramo‐Wooldridge Corporation on the post–Second World War Atlas missile project. The chapter considers the questions raised by the origins and development of systems integration, where an early framing as technical coordination raises questions about the separation of organisation and technology, and early theorising raises questions about the temporal nature of systems integration processes and the role of cooperation in achieving collaboration. The question of systems integration is of significant importance in construction with increasingly open‐ended and complex interdependencies across project boundaries.
Project leadership increasingly occurs in the context of ecological risks, whether from a viral pandemic or an anthropogenically changing climate. It requires adaptability to change, especially as projects grow in complexity, becoming seen as interventions into wider systems. In this paper, we take a socialized perspective, synthesising recent work and proposing a new research agenda in three inter-related areas that need to be addressed by project leadership: 1) changing technologies, unpacking the values that technologies represent to achieve desirable outcomes; 2) organizational complexity, engaging multiple actors and addressing emerging complexity and uncertainty and 3), ecological concerns, addressing the demands for projects to intervene positively to create sustainable, resilient and just futures. Our contribution is to theorize what socialized leadership means for these crucial issues emerging in project studies and set out directions for further research on positive forms of project leadership in a changing world.
The concept of a “digital twin” as a model for data-driven management and control of physical systems has emerged over the past decade in the domains of manufacturing, production, and operations. In the context of buildings and civil infrastructure, the notion of a digital twin remains ill-defined, with little or no consensus among researchers and practitioners of the ways in which digital twin processes and data-centric technologies can support design and construction. This paper builds on existing concepts of Building Information Modeling (BIM), lean project production systems, automated data acquisition from construction sites and supply chains, and artificial intelligence to formulate a mode of construction that applies digital twin information systems to achieve closed loop control systems. It contributes a set of four core information and control concepts for digital twin construction (DTC), which define the dimensions of the conceptual space for the information used in DTC workflows. Working from the core concepts, we propose a DTC information system workflow—including information stores, information processing functions, and monitoring technologies—according to three concentric control workflow cycles. DTC should be viewed as a comprehensive mode of construction that prioritizes closing the control loops rather than an extension of BIM tools integrated with sensing and monitoring technologies.
At a time of system shocks, significant underlying challenges are revealed in current approaches to delivering infrastructure, including that infrastructure users in many societies feel distant from nature. We set out a research agenda on systems approaches to infrastructure, drawing on ten years of interdisciplinary work on operating infrastructure, infrastructure interventions and lifecycles. Research insights and directions on complexity, systems integration, data-driven systems engineering, infrastructure life-cycles, and the transition towards zero pollution are summarised. This work identifies a need to better understand the natural and societal impacts of infrastructure interventions under uncertainty. We argue for a change in current approaches to infrastructure: starting from the natural environment and its resources, encompassing societal use of infrastructure and the supporting infrastructure assets and services. To support such proposed new systems approaches to infrastructure, researchers need to develop novel modelling methods, forms of model integration, and multi-criteria indicators.
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