Construction ICT and the ERABUILD program: present and future

The ERABUILD network aims at having a major impact on creating the European Research Area (ERA) in research on sustainable development in the construction and operation of buildings, and is therefore the ERA-Net for construction at a European level. One of its major aims is planning and preparing a trans-national R&D programme in the area, and a short term goal for the project is the development of a learning network of governmental organisations. ERABUILD issued in 2005 an invitation to tender on the topic of "Managing Information in Construction". Two proposals, which have both been selected for funding, have led to projects having both begun in Mars 2006 and finishing in April 2007:

 Strat-CON (http://www.strat-con.org),is a continuation of the former ROADCON roadmap, with the ambition to refine this roadmap, but also to further define an SRA (R&D identification and priorities scheduling) and to propose “developments” fields of future R&D projects.BICT, which aims at evaluating the possibilities and the potential of ICT in order to increase the effectiveness and the quality of the construction processes, in particular by a greater industrialization of these processes. This project grants a significant place to surveys and the case studies to propose generic models.This session will introduce to some of the current projects supported by ERABUILD in the field of Construction supported by ICT, and to future ERABUILD R&D.