Forecasting building element maintenance within an integrated construction environment

Previous work has adopted various structured analysis techniques to model an application, which aims to generate the building element maintenance forecast valuation from the building design and project estimate, as an integral part of an integrated construction environment. The Automation and Integration in Construction (AIC) Research Group at the University of Salford has developed an integrated construction environment for the construction industry in the UK—the Simultaneous Prototyping for An integrated Construction Environment (SPACE). SPACE aims to incorporate various construction applications enabling project information to be shared between these applications and allowing the user to run them simultaneously. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of the MAINtenance ForeCASTing in an Integrated Construction Environment (MAINCAST) application of SPACE. The implementation of the resulting Express-G (static data) and IDEFØ (process) models into SPACE and the development of the external remedy databases are described. Finally, through the aid of a case study project, the MAINCAST application prototype is presented.