Building construction is unique in comparison to other industrial sectors because the building site is both the factory for delivery and assembly of the product and then the real estate location for its operation and maintenance. It is also possibly unique in its extremes of sophistication - discussing the embedding of RFID in building elements whilst still putting together walls brick by brick of different sizes in different countries.
Together with these challenges, the merging of markets moves forward, with fundamental impact on the information required, generated, used and processed in the decision and supply chains of planning and building. The information users working in this field under immense time pressure are, in the main, information technology laymen (though the use of online search engines grows).
Politicians and the public share a growing awareness and concern for sustainability and limited resources (natural and financial). They and construction practitioners increasingly desire easier and more reliable access to comprehensive information in barrier-free ways - connecting islands of information, bridging proprietary formats, crossing political and language borders.
It is against this background that the CIB W102 conference was conceived as a platform to highlight practical examples of progress and to propose routes to practitioners eager to improve their business processes and to manage information.