Construction defect management using a telematic digital workbench Andy Dong a, ⁎, Mary Lou Maher a , Mi Jeong Kim b , Ning Gu c , Xiangyu Wang a a Design Lab, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney, Australia b College of Human Ecology, Kyung Hee University, Korea c School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle, Australia abstract article info Article history: Accepted 13 March 2009 Keywords: Remote collaboration Construction defect management Mobile computing Wireless communication Tabletop tangible interfaces Real-time, rich-media data communication between the construction site and the off-site design office is becoming one of the important research areas in information technology for construction. This paper presents the concept of a telematic digital workbench, a horizontal tabletop user interface integrating mobile computing and wireless communication to facilitate synchronous construction site to office collaboration. We demonstrate the capabilities and potentials of this system concept for construction defect management. The on-site crew uses a handheld mobile device to collect defect information and transfers the information to the design office through wireless communication by sending the information to a database listener. The digital workbench application monitors the database and synchronizes the location of the visual information on the site with the 3D model on the server. Integrated with 3D viewing capability in a CAD system, designers can interact with the combined model/site data using a horizontal and vertical screen. A case study compared the telematic digital workbench against paper-based and Pocket PC-based methods for defect management in a controlled laboratory experiment. The case study results show that the telematic digital workbench has the potential to improve the accuracy of matching site data to digital data and reduce information loss between site and office collaboration. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Defect management is essential for the completion and quality of construction. The current approach to defect management is time- consuming and relies heavily on repeated data entry. This process typically includes inspecting the building site, discovering defects, recording defect information using notes and textual descriptions on a paper drawing, keying the information into an online database, and, finally, communicating the information to designers and builders for resolution. Some automation has been introduced in commercial tools by entering information into a mobile computer on-site, but this data is not used to support real-time collaboration or problem solving. In terms of visualization of the defect information, the current approach is also problematic. The manual data collection and transcription has the potential to lead to missing defect information, misunderstand- ings and unclear instructions among different parties. Defect management is an example of the type of construction management problem that could benefit from technologies to sup- port synchronous design collaboration because current practices rely largely on a face-to-face mode requiring the physical presence of all stakeholders on the construction site. We have developed an approach to construction defect manage- ment as a demonstration of a concept for the real-time sharing of rich- media data between a construction site and an off-site design office. The concept, a telematic digital workbench, incorporates mobile com- puting, wireless communication and a horizontal tabletop interface, as shown in Fig. 1 . The system concept can be divided into three tiers: clients (mobile phone and workbench), communication channel (wireless network) and the server (database). The aim of this paper is to explore the potential of real-time sharing and visualization of rich-media to improve data flows between the building site and the design office. According to the authors' industry partners from one of Australia's largest multi-national construction engineering firms who contrib- uted to this research, the current common practice for defect management is for project personnel to collect defect data on-site, make notes onto drawings, and then have secretaries input the data into an online database. Defects are then rectified asynchronously, often requiring a combination of on-site and off-site meetings de- pending upon the severity of the defect. Having not been exposed to any alternatives, the possibility of being able to resolve defects in real- time had never been considered as part of their work practices. Applied to defect management, our conjecture is that the telematic digital workbench has the potential to improve synchronous colla- boration by deploying a more efficient and less time-consuming method to collect, transmit and document defect information with rich media. Using a horizontal tabletop interface for localizing and displaying defects, designers, constructors and clients can understand, access and make use of defect information collaboratively. The digital Automation in Construction 18 (2009) 814–824 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: andy.dong@usyd.edu.au (A. Dong). 0926-5805/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2009.03.005 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Automation in Construction journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon