Transformative 3D Immersive Collaboration Environment in Support of AEC Global Teamwork
Renate Fruchter · Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (2014) · 2014
Corporate experience claims that the most efficient interactions are when all project stakeholders are collocated. This is extreme collaboration when people, content, models, and processes are collocated. Nevertheless, the AEC industry experiences a continuous increase in mobility, globalization, collaboration, digital content, interactivity, and convergence of physical and virtual workplaces. This paper presents transformative impacts on product, process, and interaction of immersive 3D virtual collaboration environment in support of global teamwork. The empirical data and findings are based on longitudinal studies performed over four years observing 24 cross-disciplinary, geographically distributed AEC student project teams in the AEC Global Teamwork education testbed. The deployment and adoption of agile, integrated, project delivery work practices facilitated by the immersive 3D virtual collaboration environment demonstrate innovative and effective new ways of working such as co-creation of collaboration spaces, content in context, experiencing and troubleshooting design and construction issues in the virtual BIM models.