Cloud computing to enhance collaboration, coordination and communication in the construction industry

Construction industry involves a multitude of stakeholders who perform their work from disparate locations. This involvement of numerous stakeholders, which is common in construction industry compared to the other industries, has led to conceptual fragmentation. In spite of this fragmentation, the construction industry delivers complex projects with limitations. The limitations can be mostly attributed to the difficulties in achieving the optimum levels of collaboration, coordination, and communication (referred as three C´s) which are required for efficient project delivery. Shifting from a two-dimensional design documentation, the industry has recently embraced Building Information Models (BIM) that allow an information rich visualization of the facility during feasibility analysis stage enabling efficient information transfer among the stakeholders. Deploying the BIM in the ´cloud´ can further enhance the project integration through the near optimal levels of the three C´s. Very few researchers have investigated that the modifications made to the BIM can promote post project delivery functions too in a seamless fashion. To incorporate this, the authors had proposed a conceptual framework using BIM on the cloud for construction project life cycle. This framework is described in this paper. The utility of the framework is also discussed.