There is a significant need to improve built infrastructure in the 21st century. Population estimates suggest the planet will be home to more than 8 billion people; with McKinsey estimating a need to invest $57 trillion in the world’s infrastructure.
Professor Whyte is developing a programme of research on systems integration through her appointment to the Laing O’Rourke/Royal Academy of Engineering chair in Systems Integration (October 1st 2015-September 30 2020). The aim is to develop next generation tools for and approaches to systems integration. These realise the potential to radically improve delivery of complex infrastructure projects using data analytics to visualize and understand relationships between parts and the systemic consequences of change in complex product systems. Such tools provide decision-support for engineers and managers involved in the delivery of civil infrastructure, to ensure effective delivery of both physical assets and digital asset information.
This programme of research builds on a trajectory of research on systems integration in innovation studies; engineering and management science. Please see the Centre working paper 8 “The future of systems integration within civil infrastructure”, in which Professor Whyte gives an overview of the related literature. Particular areas of interest include:
- Assessing current systems integration techniques: By comparative analysis across different large projects, identify the strengths and weaknesses of current systems engineering techniques when applied to large and complex infrastructure projects. There will be special focus, on those requiring a high degree of integrity and those employing embedded IT networks.
- Application of system integration tools from other sectors: Taking recent theory of, and latest tools for, systems integration; applying them to construction context and assessing the results. These tools will be used to analyse interdependencies; interconnections and rework on an existing project to inform the set-up of future projects. Methods will then be developed to automate the process of extracting relevant information from large data-sets of existing project information to search for patterns within and filter data.
- Digital engineering as an interface to systems integration: This work will develop new dashboards and interfaces to digital asset information that combine simulations, models and graphics to give access to relevant information about integration from within the building information model; or immersive visualizations.
- New business models for integrated practices: The complex ecosystems of firms involved in the supply-chains for the delivery of complex projects suggests new areas of research to develop guidance for systems integration across business cultures within the design and assembly of complex projects, and guidance for firms developing new approaches to delivery, that use automation and data-analytics. As the built environment becomes fabricated in factory conditions, both off-site and on-site, there is a need to identifying the interdependencies and tolerances between sub-systems; to manage interdependencies and plan for systems integration earlier in the process of delivery.
- New systems integration challenges: Identifying ways to improve the integration of system requirements and performance criteria, system assessments, change control, work control, and documentation control in a heavily digitised, geographically dispersed environment, integrating design, manufacture, and assembly elements of delivery processes.
- Systems integration and innovation: Building on more than a decade of research at Imperial, which has drawn on innovation studies to examine platform architectures; modularity and how systems integration happens on large complex projects, this work will examine the relationship between the architectures used for systems integration and the opportunities for innovation in civil engineering products, processes and services.