Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/M42169/01
Title:	ADLIB: AGENT BASED SUPPORT FOR THE COLLABORATIVE DESIGN OF LIGHT INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS
Principal Investigator:	Anumba, Professor CJ
Other Investigators:	Thorpe, Professor A
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:	Atkins BRE Group (Building Res Establishment) BT CSC Curtins Consulting Engineers Health and Safety Executive Pre Nexus Migration Steel Construction Institute
Department:	Civil and Building Engineering
Organisation:	Loughborough University
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	01 March 1999	Ends:	30 September 2001	Value (£):	238,363
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Construction Ops & Management
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Construction
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
There is growing interest in the adoption of collaborative working practices in the construction industry as a means of addressing many of the problems caused by the fragmentation of the industry. This project is intended to facilitate the collaborative design of light industrial buildings (steel portal frames, in particular) through the use of distributed artificial intelligence, which is commonly implemented in the form of intelligent agents. This approach, which overcomes the problem of geographically distributed teams, is relatively novel in the construction industry. It also goes beyond existing systems in seeking to develop intelligent agents that are able to negotiate with one another to arrive at an optimum design solution. The use of agent-based systems, such as that proposed in this project, is expected to result in increased competitiveness of the UK construction industry, as the decentralisation of complex, large-scale problems, and the collaborative input to their resolution, will lead to better quality, more economic, safer and more optimal designs. The resulting prototype system will demonstrate this potential while serving as a suitable framework for exploring many of the issues involved in agent-based collaborative design. The system will be made available to all via the Internet and the results of the project transferred to the construction industry through the industry project partners, seminars, workshops, learned institution presentations and the Construction Productivity Network (CPN).
Key Findings
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Potential use in non-academic contexts
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Impacts
Description This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk Summary Date Materialised
Sectors submitted by the Researcher
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Project URL:
Further Information:
Organisation Website:	http://www.lboro.ac.uk