Building Sector Broadband Technology Projects – CICC, MICC and RESOLV
Background
Given the recent flurry of comment surrounding the issue of chartered surveyors and new technology, I thought it might be useful to look back on three forward-thinking pan-European real estate and construction sector broadband projects that I was closely involved with in the mid-late 90’s – and which still stand up well today given that their outlook was very much focused on what life might be like in 2010.
In this blog, I simply want to provide an overview of these projects and the background to them.
In a proposed follow-up blog I will try and solicit comments from both those who were involved in the projects and a wider industry audience as to how they perceive to what extent such early technologies and concepts have made it into the real world of today.
*I have video footage of all these projects which was produced at Channel 4 as part of a CPD educational series I made for the Television Education Network’s RICS channel and which I am currently arranging for online viewing.)
1995 and all that…..
1995 was really the first year that I became aware of the WWW. Email and Compuserve were already gathering pace but the WWW was very much in its infancy and the websites that were beginning to emerge were characterised by static, simple content – they had to be – this was still the era of 14.4 modem. (Remember how excited we all were when 56k appeared?)
I had great early belief in the potential of using internet and the WWW as a medium for both vertical market, sector-specific information and also interactive communication. In my case, this was very much focused on the real estate and construction sectors.
As a sideline, I was beginning to dabble in early website coding (I still have the first website editor software in my library – on a single floppy disc) and I thought I’d have a go at developing a site for surveyors and others with an interest in property and construction.
The result was ‘PROCONET’ (Property and Construction Network) and was essentially a series of pages of static text and lists of links to the limited amount of related UK and European sector resources available at that time.
It was picked up by the construction press and as a result I received various invitations to do this and that, speak at various seminars and generally pontificate on the future of the WWW in relation to the surveying industry. (After all, this was just post the Latham Report and the worst of the 90’s recession and the industry was keen to at least pay lip service to anything new that might both satisfy Latham and lead to a brighter commercial future – even if it meant attempting to understand the word ‘technology’.)
European R&D projects
One particular invitation related to my acting as both industry consultant and project administrator in relation to several research and development projects being funded by the European Commission and which were concerned with identifying potential broadband applications and services within the real estate and construction sectors.
These projects were being masterminded by BICC Plc (which at the time was the parent company of Balfour Beatty) and led by Dr David Leevers – somewhat of a visionary in relation to the psychology of communication and human-technology interaction.
As a result, I spent three years working on three very different projects with partners drawn from the construction, technology and academic sectors and who included Bovis Lendlease, Bechtel, Bouygues, BT, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Leeds University, Brunel University and various other specialist European software and technical organisations.
The three project acronyms were CICC, MICC and RESOLV:
CICC – Collaborative Integrated Communications For Construction
MICC -Mobile Integrated Communications For Construction
RESOLV – Reconstruction using Scanned Optical Laser and Video’
*The latter which actually used the RICS foyer at Great George St as the initial demo subject matter – and which will feature in the related podcast.
The European IT and Communication Technology R&D Focus
By way of brief background, these projects were largely enabled as a result of the EU allocating a large budget to technology focused R&D and which is still ongoing today.
The decision to provide such funding was (and is) seen as a fundamental step in helping to ensure the uniform development of information and Broadband communication technologies throughout the whole of the European Union.
Such policy has meant that a unique opportunity has arisen for commercial oriented companies to limit their R&D investment risk and allowed them to develop and test technologies which have a more medium-long term aspect.
Funded projects typically comprise between 5-10 partners drawn from a representative cross section of EC Member States with each being concerned with a particular commercial, technical or evaluation aspect.
2010: The Year of European Advanced Communications (?)
I see that when I was originally writing the CPD study paper in 1997 I mentioned that
‘…the overall scenario envisaged by the EC was that Europe will proceed to an advanced communications environment by 2010 which will be comparable with other advanced networks elsewhere and which will form part of a global, Broadband network based information infrastructure.’
And guess what? – it’s now 2010!
So has this aspiration more or less been achieved?
This is not perhaps the moment to comment in great depth but to the greatest extent I would say ‘Yes’.
During the last decade, Europe has gathered pace in it’s provision and take-up of broadband networks.
As a result, the applications and services that are now available to both businesses and consumers are enormously wide ranging and light years away from my meagre ‘PROCONET’ effort in 1995.
However, perhaps the main limitation and disappointment is that in the main broadband networks are still based on ASDL and running over pre-internet copper telephone infrastructure. Whilst there are pockets of fibre enabled networks out there, these are still too few and far between to have any current major impact in relation to the majority of end users.
Whilst ADSL based download speeds an capacities are pretty good, anyone requiring decent upload speed and capacities is still finding it very hard going over the typical public networks. (Just try live ‘TV’ style webcasting for example.)
But I digress….
(i) CICC (Collaborative Integrated Communications for Construction)
CICC’s primary objective was to show how technologies such as intranet, online databases, virtual reality and augmented reality can enable true collaborative working between dispersed and temporary teams – and which is a very typical characteristic of construction sector projects.
CICC trialled these technologies within real European construction projects in the UK and Spain and evaluated them from both a psycho-social and techno-economic point of view.
In the UK, the Bluewater retail complex in Kent provided a major trial facility. Web browser software provided single source access to project information and personnel over an intranet and afforded the ability to: view and interact with all kinds of project documents, drawings and schedules from a central database; the ability to interact with a highly detailed 3D virtual reality project model; and the means to instantly communicate with client and project team members through the use of integrated video conferencing and electronic whiteboards.
The stated project objectives were:
• Improving project team collaboration using visualisation techniques to help participants see project issues from a common point of view.
• Presenting the right information in the right format at the right time demonstrated the potential for improving project efficiency.
• The use of electronic decision records to demonstrate how quality could be maintained while devolving responsibilities within a more federal framework.
The project developed and integrated the following components:
• An interactive multimedia directory which presented relevant people and documents in a WWW/VRML (avatar) landscape. The objective was to convey the implied relationships and intuitive communications channels that make team working in a shared office so effective. (As David Leevers now says, this can be thought of as early kind of Facebook application.)
• A three dimensional project model that reinforced client, project team and end user understanding of the characteristics of a particular project.
• “Augmented Reality” – integrated video and virtual reality that assists in 3D visualisation and integrates real, ‘as built’ construction elements with data drawn from the project model and information database.
• Multimedia Communications across a variety of hardware platforms including PCs, mobile devices and specialist prototype products such as a multimedia hardhat.
(ii) MICC (Mobile Integrated Communications for Construction)
MICC partners included major European construction companies Boygues, Balfour Beatty, Hochtief and Dragados as well as mobile technology specialist partner VTT in Finland.
MICC was concerned with the use of mobile communications on construction sites to improve quality, safety and efficiency.
The project centred on the idea of a ‘communications container‘ which took the form of a self-contained communications nerve-centre unit delivered to site at the outset of construction.
The idea was that container would provide all communication infrastructure including radio system, data networks, connections for site offices as well as links to public and private networks such as the World Wide Web and project intranets / extranets.
The stated project objectives were:
• To reduce idle time
• Make more efficient use of plant
• Enable a move towards Just-In-Time Management of materials
• Improve co-ordination
The MICC technologies included:
• Data capture – electronic collection of on-site data with real-time updating of project databases
• Management of plant – monitoring and control of machinery
• Positioning – the use of differential Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) to aid site layout, position structures and locate plant
• Personal communications – replace walkie-talkies with full voice and messaging services
• Multimedia conferencing – video, voice and shared whiteboard tools
• Remote inspection – live video and video stills from site to remote experts
The thought was that the communications container and mobile networked terminals will become commercially available with construction companies being able to purchase or rent a turnkey service.
(iii) RESOLV (Reconstruction using Scanned Optical Laser and Video)
RESOLV was a very novel project which sought to combine laser and video systems in order to enable 3D visual and measured building scans, the data from which could then be used to construct virtual models of existing buildings and which would have visually correct photographic rendered surfaces etc.
The belief was that such reconstructions would have a wide range of potential facilities management, estate management and sales and marketing applications with the additional inherent ability to output the results over multimedia networks such as the World Wide Web.
The prototype used a manually pushed trolley on which was mounted the scanning head which comprised an integrated laser rangefinder and video camera.
The device could be wheeled around a building whilst the head scanned from side to side and up and down, capturing video and measured data in thin ‘slices’ which were then seamlessly integrated to produce the 3D reconstruction. (This was exactly the scenario in relation to scanning the RICS foyer at Great George St in London.)
The technology challenges were immense in relation to both hardware and software – and the computing power required to build the 3D models was enormous.
Nevertheless the ideas were there – if somewhat ahead of their time and the technological ability require to fully support them.
In Summary
In 1997 I wrote the following in my conclusion to the CPD study paper:
“Society is now beginning to experience the everyday effects of the new information and communication technology revolution.
Changes in social and working trends are being both led and enhanced by easy to use and cost-effective systems such as PC based, web browser accesed, personal global communications and group working applications.
The quality and efficiency of such technologies is improving rapidly with the introduction of new potent multimedia Broadband networks which are now being globally deployed.”
These are having a particular impact in relation to Chartered Surveyors both in terms of the way they themselves work and the property markets and clients they serve.”
… and yet… I could just have easily have written this in January 2010.