News Archive 2018-2017
2018
Cambridge alliance secures £72 million in government funding to drive innovation and boost construction
The Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) at the University of Cambridge has joined a new alliance with the MTC (Manufacturing Technology Centre) and BRE (Building Research Establishment) to transform the way that infrastructure in the UK is designed, built, and used. The Transforming Construction Alliance brings together experts specialising in digital, manufacturing, building performance standards and construction technology. It has been awarded £72 million by Innovate UK to deliver the Core Innovation Hub (CIH), a key investment to transform productivity in the construction sector within the Transforming Construction Programme, funded from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.
See more on this story here.
An update from Professor Andy Neely, Director of the Centre for Digital Built Britain is here.
Submitted by administrator on Mon, 03/12/2018
Two Cambridge PhD candidates win first prize at ICCEM 2018
Ruodan Lu and Philipp Hüthwohl, two PhD candidates in the Laing O'Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering and Technology, have won first prize at the 11th Innovation Competition in Construction Engineering and Management (ICCEM) held at Tsinghua University on 28th June 2018, in Beijing, China.
Their project "Automated System for Generating Digital Twins of Existing Reinforced Concrete (RC) Bridges" won the top prize out of 54 teams.
Submitted by administrator on Thu, 30/08/2018
Construction IT researchers steal the show at the IET Innovation Awards
The group from the University of Cambridge took one of the top prizes at the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) Innovation Awards ceremony in central London last night.
A research team from the Division of Civil Engineering took the Information Technology Award for their development of a framework that automatically generates the Digital Twins (DTs) of reinforced concrete bridges, then measures and maps all visible defects on the DTs, helping management of repair work.
The technology uses point cloud data (PCD) to automatically generate a DT of a bridge, then uses high-resolution images registered as textures on the model to detect and map defects. The process standardises maintenance procedures, giving greater accuracy and efficiency.
Dr Ioannis Brilakis, Laing O’Rourke Reader in Construction Engineering and Director of the Construction IT lab at the University of Cambridge highlighted that:
“The first part of a National Digital Twin agenda is the ability to generate geometric virtual copies of all existing structures and enrich them with structured and unstructured data. The outcomes of this research show that it is now possible to do this.”
The judging panel were impressed with the entry, saying:
“In the diverse field of IT entries, this entry’s innovation stood out. It’s early in its lifecycle but is assessed to be promising and during judging became topical. The ability to generate digital twins of concrete structures and highlight defects is impressive. Congratulations for a fine piece of innovation.”
Submitted by administrator on Mon, 19/11/2018
Ruodan Lu, PhD candidate at Construction IT lab was awarded the 2017 CETI Award in the category Outstanding Student Research Project by Fiatech
Ruodan Lu, PhD candidate at Construction IT lab, her project Automated Bridge Information Model Generation System in the category Outstanding Student Research Project has been selected by the members of the CETI Awards Jury to win a CETI AWARD 2017. Ruodan accepted this award in person at the Fiatech-CII conference, which was held at the Hyatt Hill Country resort San Antonio, TX on March 19-21, 2018.
Fiatech is a global community of capital facility stakeholders working together to drive productivity and efficiency improvements by advancing technology and innovation practices. Fiatech’s Celebration of Engineering & Technology Innovation (CETI) Awards recognize significant achievements in technology research, development, and implementation in the capital projects industry.
Ruodan’s project plans to target the needs of the bridge owners and provide a step-change in the way we inspect existing highway bridges by delivering a cost-effective software solution for automated compilation of solid 3D geometry from point cloud data to help monitor and inspect existing bridges while decreasing the cost of repairs and maintenance.
Ruodan is supervised by Dr. Ioannis Brilakis. She is due to graduate before the end of this academic year. In the future, Ruodan will continue dedicating herself to the area of automation in construction through technologies and innovations.
Submitted by administrator on 26/03/2018
Professor Ioannis Brilakis and Dr Bella Nguyen have just been awarded the John O. Bickel Award
Dr Ioannis Brilakis, Laing O’Rourke Reader and Dr Bella Nguyen have been selected by the Construction Institute to receive the prestigious ASCE 2018 John O. Bickel Award for the paper, “Optimized Parameters for Over-Height Vehicle Detection under Variable Weather Conditions”, published in the September 2017 issue of Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering.
The award will be received during the Construction Research Congress in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, April 2-4, 2018.
Submitted by administrator on Thu, 15/03/2018
2017
Cambridge finish in the top 10 and secure place in final of construction competition
The CIT Lab congratulates two teams of Cambridge Engineering students, which were assembled by Dr. Ioannis Brilakis, and achieved second and ninth place in the first phase of a global construction competition, with one team through to the final. Team CUBE (Ziqing Liew, Julian Ting, Zhi Hao Kok and James Liew) will enter the final of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) Global Student Challenge on July 18-20 in Hong Kong.
More information can be found here.
Submitted by administrator on Thu, 05/11/2017
Conference paper of PhD student Bella Nguyen ranked among the top papers of the 2017 Lean and Computing in Construction Congress (LC3)
Conference paper of PhD student Bella Nguyen ranked among the top papers of the 2017 Lean and Computing in Construction Congress (LC3)
A conference paper titled "Minimising misclassification of over-height vehicles due to wind" and authored by PhD student Bella Nguyen and Dr Ioannis Brilakis ranked among the top 9 papers of the 118 papers accepted for the Joint Conference on Computing in Construction (JC3). For this reason, Ms Nguyen has been invited to give a JC3 "highlight" presentation in the plenary room of the conference. The paper can be found here.
The LC3 will be held in Heraklion, Greece, 4-12 July 2017. It is a unique Construction Congress, comprised of three co-located conferences, an industry day and PhD summer schools (BIM and Lean Construction) grouped into four main events. For more details, please visit the website at here.
Submitted by administrator on Thu, 05/11/2017
Cambridge engineers develop ‘intelligent’ system to prevent bridge strikes by tall trucks
An Engineering PhD alumnus Dr Bella Nguyen investigated how to detect and prevent bridge strikes, the results of which were the subject of a recent study for Transport for London (TfL), published in the Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering. The new system is paired with an LED display unit downstream to warn drivers of the upcoming low bridge and suggesting they take the nearest road exit. If the driver continues and hits the bridge, accelerometers on the bridge structure will instruct the system to keep a copy of the most recent video feed as evidence and extract from it number plate information. The collision report containing all this information is then sent to the relevant authorities for action.
Submitted by administrator on Wed, 12/06/2017
Construction Engineering Masters debate
On Thursday 30th March the Construction Engineering Masters debate was held in the Cambridge Union's debating chamber. Six students, with the support of their classmates and coached by Dr. Ioannis Brilakis, put forward their arguments for and against the motion that Brexit will be a good thing for the construction sector. The debaters were well prepared with good arguments presented on both sides, exploring issues related to labour, funding, standards and materials. We congratulate Krzysztof Sieleczyk, Lara Tabet, Ron Henry, Alessandra Villa, Conor Considine and Manos Adoniadis for their stellar performance on the evening. Alessandra Villa deserves a special mention, winning the evening's 'best speaker' award.
Submitted by administrator on Thu, 04/20/2017
PhD Student Eva Agapaki wins Best "Rising Star" Poster
Submitted by administrator on Fri, 17/03/2017
Getting virtual infrastructure models out of the computer and into the workspace
Engineers will soon be able to visualize Building Information Models (BIMs) in full scale at their offices or superimposed on the real structure at construction sites, thanks to technology developed by the Department of Engineering’s Construction IT laboratory in collaboration with Trimble and Microsoft.
The new mixed reality technologies for visualizing fully textured infrastructure models in the office and schedule-loaded BIMs on site will be shown at BETT, a major technology show in London by partner Microsoft.
Using the Bridge Inspector HoloLens app created by the Cambridge team, engineers are able to inspect the condition of infrastructure in office as if they were standing on site in front of the real asset. “Bringing a bridge to life at full scale while still being aware of your surroundings is a major time saver for experienced inspectors,” explains Dr Ioannis Brilakis, who has been pioneering the as-is virtualization of existing infrastructure assets since 2005. The research behind this work conducted by PhD student Philipp Huethwohl will revolutionise the way we inspect major structures in the future.
The Progress Monitoring HoloLens app on the other hand also created by the Cambridge team allows engineering to bring four dimensional design models to site and intelligently superimpose them on the real structure. The app allows construction inspectors to both visualize progress and automatically detect building elements that should have been built at the time of their visit but are missing. “All elements missing are marked as behind-schedule automatically in the 4D model simply by looking at them during an inspection visit” explains Marianna Kopsida, who is the PhD student responsible for this project.
The team’s current research focuses on how to guide inspectors in these massive models and focus their attention on the elements most relevant to their inspection task-list. “This is all about productivity and improving workflows”, explains Dr Brilakis, which is a prerequisite for enabling industry wide technology adoption.
Here you can find a video with some examples of the above research on mixed reality for infrastructure. You can also find more information here and here.
Submitted by administrator on Tue, 24/01/2017