Automatic DfMA Design Generator (ADAGE): An Internet of Things tool to instill adoption of DfMA by Building Designers

**DEFINITIONS**

**Concept-design:** Design team's initial response to a project brief.

**Detailed-design:** A design with full details, developed from approved concept-design

**SUMMARY**

Due to coronavirus lockdown, UK Construction Total Activity Index dropped to 39.3 in March from 52.6 in February; the steepest fall in construction output in 11-years (IHS-Markit, 2020). Government wants to use the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity "to build the homes" and plans to "build build build" as part of recovery plans for construction industry and wider economy, announcing £5bn infrastructure and £12billion affordable newbuild homes investments (PrimeMinister's office,2020). Unfortunately, current/traditional construction methods are too inefficient to achieve this in the required time as they are mostly responsible for the current record housing backlog/deficit of 4milliom-homes (National Housing Federation,2018; BBC Housing-Briefing,2020; McKinsey & Company,2019), and were way off-track to achieve national infrastructure programme's proposed £650billion projects worth by 2025

Current/traditional construction methods are slow, costly, poor quality and relatively unsafe. Compared to manufacturing industry, its poor productivity has cost UK economy £140billion (including tax) over 20years (Mace,2018). Alluding to the problem, the government backs construction industry in its attempt to emulate manufacturing industry by switching to Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) (Construction Sector Deal, 2018). DfMA trial projects led to reduction of 60%, 44% and 70%+ in duration, cost and onsite labour respectively, 73% improvement in quality and 80% improvement in overall productivity compared to traditional methods (RIBA,2008).

Despite the many gains, efforts towards DfMA approach's wider adoption has been unsuccessful, with less than 5% of designers employing the approach. Research by CIOB, RIBA and AECOM show the lack of adoption is because current designers were trained/taught to design for construction and have practised this method for long. Attempts to use CPD trainings have yielded only slight benefit as designers claim being too busy. However, the pandemic has now meant near zero trainees/designers registering, with the training companies and construction output bearing the brunt

This project thus aims to use digital means to encourage a wider DfMA adoption by developing a BIM software plugin that automatically generates DfMA concept-designs based on key building design parameters from client/project brief (e.g. material choice, building use/purpose, etc.)

The proposed plugin will use Internet of Things, Blockchain Technology, cloud computing, artificial intelligence algorithms (AIA) and big data analytics and include the following:

1)**Automatic DfMA concept-design generator:** will generate multiple concept-designs based on input parameters. Designs will be editable to achieve 'detailed-design' to suit designers' preference. Designs will be generated using:

1a) Parametric modelling AIAs which will use historic data of former DfMA designs to produce new solutions

1b)Generative design AIAs to improve new solutions, producing many valid high performance but cost effective options.

2)**DfMA component adviser:** will suggest components (e.g. lattice-slab, shell-beams etc.) usable to edit an adopted DfMA concept-design to achieve detailed-design that suits designers' preference.

3)**DfMA component availability and price checker:** will provide information on DfMA components prices, delivery times, availability, suppliers' locations, etc.

4)**DfMA designs comparison tool:** will compare selected generated/edited designs based on total cost, estimated duration,etc.