CADD-based construction information management for corps of engineers projects

A large amount of information is created throughout the life of a facility construction project, from design, construction, testing and startup to operation and maintenance. Effective operations, maintenance, and renovation of the facility are dependent on high quality information collected during the facility life-cycle. It has been a challenge to efficiently capture and manage the project as-built information. This paper presents an on-going research effort to capture and manage construction information electronically throughout the life-cycle of a project. A conceptual data model and a prototype system, named CADD-based Construction Information Management System (CADCIMS) have been developed based on existing research on multimedia project control and documentation system (MULTROL) and CADD-based information retrieval system (CADCON). CADCIMS provides various ways to store and access the construction information based on CADD system. It allows the construction management team to take advantage of the CADD files received from the design team to build an information management framework for managing construction tasks. Furthermore CADCIMS uses the information framework to collect/update accurate as-built project information for operation/maintenance.