Recognising the need to improve the competitiveness of the European constructional steelwork industry led to the initiation, in 1987, of the CIMsteel project. The project vision was to transform this industry sector into a world-class integrated manufacturing process leading to improved and economic steelwork structures. This phase of the project, which is due to finish in 1998, has involved over 70 collaborating organisations in nine European countries. F.K. Garas and I. Hunter
In I994 Whitby Bird & Partners recognised the potential for technology transfer from the construction industry to the design offfice through the appropriate application of CIMsteel translators and related software. M. Whitby and R. McWilliams
This paper describes the investigation, appraisal, and reuse, of the cast-iron structure of a disused textile mill in West Yorkshire, now occupied by the School of Computing and Mathematics of the University of Huddersfield. M.N. Bussell and M.J. Robinson
This paper describes the development of specifications for a management information system (MIS) suitable for a typical fabrication company in the constructional steelwork sector. The developments were undertaken by the Construction Management Group at the University of Leeds as part of the manufacture and construction activities of the CIMsteel project. The paper specifications have also assisted the development of expansions to preexisting MIS software developed by GoData as used by many fabrication companies in the UK and other countries. The paper also describes the extension of these initial investigations to the business processes within and around a fabricator and to considerations of overall improvements of process and ultimately to possible future scenarios for the whole constructional steelwork sector. Dipl. Ing. D. Mitrovic, Professor S.P. Male, A.J. Steel and I. Hunter
Within the CIMsteel project, design has been defined as ‘The creation of the information necessary for manufacturing to begin’. Thus a wide range of tasks has been undertaken with the general aim of improving the quality of that design information. Table l lists the specific tasks, each intended to address at least one of the following objectives: - anticipating the introduction of EC3 and EC4 as the principal reference sources of design information for steel and composite construction. - recognising that several aspects of more detailed structural design were not fully covered by current provisions - improving the awareness of designers as to the consequences of their decisions on the downstream construction processes - utilising up-to-date methods for the creation and transfer of the design information - recognising the growing importance of IT as the medium to facilitate the undertaking of these tasks D.G. Brown and Professor D.A. Nethercot