A SERVICE-ORIENTED FRAMEWORK FOR INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION IN ARCHITECTURE, ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION

In collaborative engineering environments communication and information sharing among participants is essential for successful project delivery. Modern information technology is driving the world towards two divergent communication topologies: 1) the industry is driven towards a centralized one around an information model, 2) citizens using information technologies at home are driven towards a meshed one where each can communicate whenever to whoever using communication services like those in social media. This paper presents the analysis, conceptual framework, architecture and prototype of a system that is bringing the latter to the engineering community. The framework consists of two main components: 1) a framework engine providing working environment and support for core services such as locale storage and module integration, and 2) external modules, extending core capabilities of the framework. For the purpose of this research work the SWOT analysis has been carried out revealing main characteristics of the proposed approach.