Dr. Daniel Castro-Lacouture is Professor and Chair in the School of Building Construction, College of Design, at Georgia Institute of Technology. His current research centers on defining and implementing performance evaluation protocols for technology innovations in the built environment, such as sustainable construction materials and alternative sources of energy. He received a BSc in Civil Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia, in 1994, an MSc in Construction Management from The University of Reading, UK, in 1999 and a PhD from the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University in 2003. Professor Castro worked as Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Ohio University from 2003 to 2006. He is a Registered Professional Engineer, and worked in project engineering and management in the public and private sectors from 1994 to 1998. Dr. Castro is the Associate Editor of Automation in Construction, serves in the Board of Directors of the International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction, the International Green Builder Certification Board, the Governing Board of the Architecture/Construction/Engineering (ACE) Mentor Program of Atlanta, and was the Chair of the 2014 ASCE Construction Research Congress. He is the co-author of Sustainability in Engineering Design and Construction (2016, CRC Press).
Better (and within reason) design-construction interactions in a BIM world: challenges and opportunities
A better built environment should portray better design-construction interactions. While good design is fundamental to the success of construction, good construction is also important to reflect fundamental design intentions, more so in complex, innovative projects. With increasing levels of diverse knowledge related to trades, materiality, shapes, spatial context, sustainability, interoperability, labor force, topology, etc., design-construction interactions are prone to information disruptions or conflicts that will surely lead to impacts in project safety, quality, cost and schedule. This presentation discusses new approaches, mostly enabled by building information modeling (BIM), for eliciting design performance information and how they intermingle with the ability to prevent conflicts while maintaining design intent during construction. From the not so distant attempts to automate and integrate information flows of materials and design information to current cloud-based collaboration formats, the presentation will also address the potential for using design performance information in optimization models, workforce management analytics, and process improvement. Implications to current educational practices will also be discussed.
