Knowledge-based assistants in collaborative engineering

Abstract

Collaborative engineering requires the exchange and use of design information in a multidisciplinary team with time and space separations among the designers over the course of the design process. A challenge to effective collaboration is the delivery of existing knowledge to the time and place required. Upstream communication is necessary when participants later in the sequence, such as the construction team, possess information needed by those earlier in the sequence, such as the design team. For separate entities sequentially performing design and construction, knowledge-based assistants can provide such essential information as relative costs of construction choices when the construction partner is not yet identified. For a single entity team performing design-build, knowledge-based assistants can provide consistent and thorough implementation of design choices considering cross-disciplinary and construction issues. Steel building design/fabrication/ construction serves as an example to provide specific context for discussion of the use of knowledge-based assistants with emphasis on upstream communication of design information. Cost savings are used to measure the value of such knowledge-based assistants. Knowledge-based assistants encapsulating cross-disciplinary knowledge can also be used to assist in design situations encountered on a semi-regular basis by a design organization but infrequently by an individual designer. Cases and rules in combination can give designers guidance based on pooled organization experience. Such use of knowledge-based assistants is briefly illustrated for 1) steel bridge fabrication error resolution and 2) repair of fatigue damage found for in-service bridges.