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Centre for Digital Built Britain completed its five-year mission and closed its doors at the end of September 2022

This website remains as a legacy of the achievements of our five-year foundational journey towards a digital built Britain
 

The Construction Innovation Hub's  (the Hub) Platform Design Programme (PDP) working in partnership with both government and industry to develop a platform construction system consisting of a standardised kit of parts to deliver social infrastructure buildings, such as schools, hospitals, and village halls.  This paper, written in collaboration with the Hub, is intended as a contribution towards developing the Information Management Framework that will form the foundation for sharing consistent data not only for the PDP, but for use across government and industry.   

The report outlines the foundation for composition – a general formal structure at the heart of engineering breakdowns, including the assembly of assets from parts. Most current information systems have been designed around specific breakdowns, without considering their general underlying formal structure. This is understandable, given the focus on devising the breakdown and that there is not a readily available formal structure to build upon. This report is a step towards providing a solid general structure; one that will not only be reusable across all kinds of breakdowns but also a solid foundation for the future.   

At the core of the notion of a component breakdown is the component as an integral (dependent) part of the composite whole. This leads to a rich formal structure – in particular, one that is sufficiently accurate to support interoperability.   

The report describes this structure and develops a framework for assessing how well a data model (or ontology) has captured the main elements of the structure. This will enable the assessment of existing models as well as the design of new models. 

Author: Chris Partridge, Andrew Mitchell and Pierre Grenon 

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17863/CAM.66459