A Framework for Concurrent Engineering - ToCEE + and M. Hannus # blishment, UK Bauinformatik, TU Dresden, Germany + Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia # TT, Finland s. However, in n of concurrent engineering varies s and ace considerable sational and the ve application of ineering in the building achieved: 06, and APs 225, 230 and 231 and by several EU projects, e.g., ATLAS (Böhms and Storer, 1994), CIMsteel (Watson roe, 1995) blonski, 1995) as s in several commercial and research based EDM systems. nt of the process, ted manner, as ble environments ke of concurrent To help tackle these issues the EU ESPRIT project ToCEE (To R. Amor , P. Katranuschkov , M. Clift , Prof. R. Scherer , Z. Turk o * o * o IT Research and Application, Building Research Esta * Institut für Baumechanik und Building Technology, V 1. Introduction The construction industry has been moving towards concurrent engineering for many year practice, the degree of success achieved through the applicatio considerably. Organisational factors, especially with respect to information management method techniques, coupled with different levels of training and experience of personnel, pl limitations on the level of concurrency and collaborative work that can be achieved. Information technology has an enormous potential to improve both the organi technological infrastructure of construction projects and thus to facilitate the effecti concurrent engineering methodology. In the application of IT for concurrent eng industry valuable steps have already been • in product model based integration, by STEP (ISO 10303-1), with parts 41-45, 103, 1 and Crowley, 1995), COMBI (Scherer and Sparacello, 1995) and COMBINE (Augenb • in process modelling, e.g., by the CALS initiative • in workflow developments and electronic document management, by the WfMC (Ja well a In spite of these achievements, concurrent engineering issues, such as the manageme product, documentation, and communication, are still being handled in a fragmen individual, mutually independent, or at best only partially interrelated systems. Interopera have yet to be developed which can fully integrate into practice and increase the upta engineering. wards a C oncurrent E ngineering E nvironment in the Building and Engineering Structures Industry) was inaugurated in 1996 (ESPRIT IV- 05 ganisational infrastructure for imary objectives of the ToCEE n the current -users. Other results will be developed and tested as prototypes g ts for concurrent engineering, it is worth considering what is meant by this term. From concurrent engineering research in other domains we have the following definitions: • In Winner et al. (1988) concurrent engineering is defined as “a systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products and their related processes, including manufacturing and support. This approach is intended to cause the developers, from the outset, to consider all elements of the product life cycle from concept through disposal, including quality, cost, schedule and user requirements”. • In Dean and Unal (1992) concurrent engineering is defined as „getting the right people together at the right time to identify and resolve design problems. Concurrent engineering is designing for assembly, availability, cost, customer satisfaction, maintainability, manageability, manufacturability, operability, performance, quality, risk, safety, schedule, social acceptability, and all other attributes of the product”. 2 87 ToCEE). ToCEE will contribute to the improvement of the or concurrent engineering by utilising the opportunities offered by IT. The pr project are the development of an overall conceptual framework, as well as specific software tools, for concurrent engineering support. Some of the results are intended to be applied directly i software environments utilised by end leading to a more long term development approach. 2. Extending Integrated Environments for Concurrent Engineerin Before examining requirements to extend previously created integrated environmen