Author Archives: Dr Maxwell Mallia-Parfitt

Technology, Strategy and Business Models Workshop

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The latest in the series of ‘Technology, Strategy and Business Models’ workshops was held at Cass Business School, City University London from 2-3 September 2014. Dr. Sunila Lobo presented her work on her thoughts regarding the potential for co-creating and capturing value in the complex business ecosystem of construction megaprojects; so firms in ‘loosely coupled networks can share complex and usually un-codified knowledge and co-evolve their capabilities to create more value and improve efficiency’ (Williamson and De Meyer, 2012). These workshops are organized by the business models group at CENTIVE, Cass Business School and are for junior faculty across Europe to present their work and receive feedback from the community. Senior faculty also present their leading edge work and the sessions are highly interactive. Participants from France, Austria, Switzerland, and the UK attended.

This 2-day workshop was preceded by a meeting called ‘Better Business Models’ on the 1st of September 2014, to update senior faculty on work carried out since the December 2013 conference on Business Models and to discuss next steps regarding research on business models. Dr. Sunila Lobo updated this senior group on work being carried out at the Design Innovation Research Centre, on behalf of Prof. Whyte.

For more information, please contact s.lobo@reading.ac.uk.

ICCCBE Conference

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The International Society for Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (ISCCBE) 2014 Conference in conjunction with the 2014 CIB W078 conference has just concluded in Florida, and was attended by Dr Dragana Nikolic and Dr Maxwell Parfitt. ICCCBE is a leading forum in the area of information technology in civil and building engineering. It is organized by the ISCCBE and is run bi-annually.
Dr Parfitt presented his work at the conference on Visualization of Built Environments using a Mobile Immersive Visualization Environment (3D-MOVE).

A video of the presentation can be viewed here.
For more information, please contact Dr Parfitt.

EPSRC Vacation Bursary

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Following the success of our summer placement students last year [1] [2] we have recruited another student, through the EPSRC Vacation Bursary program, to help develop software to support user interaction within the Fully Immersive Virtual Environment (the CAVE).

Ed Norman, a 3rd year MEng student studying Artificial Intelligence, will join the Design Innovation Research Centre team for 10 weeks this summer to work on Digital Model Interaction: Towards a virtual reality toolbox for BIM data interaction.

3D MOVE (Mobile Visualisation Environment) Test Assembly

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Working with our friends from Harkness Screens we recently tested the 3D MOVE with its new screens.

The timelapse video below shows Dr Maxwell Mallia-Parfitt, instructing two of the Harkness team in putting up the 3D MOVE.

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With 3 people the task of unpacking, assembling and using the 3D MOVE took only 32 minutes.

3D MOVE Frame Assembly

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The carbon fibre and 3D printed framework to support our 3D MOVE (Mobile Visualisation Environment) screens was tested this week to see how easy it was to assemble by two people.

The frame is about 8Kg when assembled, thanks to the adoption of composite carbon fibre tubes and 3D printed brackets. It encompasses a volume of 2.8 x 2.8 x 2.1 meters, which is the same as our existing CAVE in the Visualisation and Immersive Technologies Centre (VIT-C).

The time-lapse video below shows Dr Maxwell Parfitt and Andy Sears (EPSRC Summer Research Placement Student) assembling the 3D MOVE frame for the first time in under 6 minutes.

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MiddleVR tutorials online

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These tutorials have been created by Dr Maxwell Parfitt to help researchers and students bring their simulations into the University of Reading CAVE:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRUCcitKYCqH91bB5KZIg1zjQMNVMfqMr

These will guide you through how to create a Unity project, import the MiddleVR configuration and deploy the simulations to the CAVE platform in full Active Stereo with head and hand tracking.

DIRC team feature in University Bulletin

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Energy Maradza

This month’s issue of the Graduate School Bulletin features an article on the front cover regarding the recent PhD Research Conference, which attracted over 250 research students from across the University. Energy Maradza, one of the Design Innovation Research Centre PhD Researchers, is pictured describing his work on BIM process standardisation in construction innovation systems as part of the poster competition.

In the same Bulletin Dr Maxwell Parfitt, one of the Design Innovation Research Centre Research Fellows was featured describing his work and experience since graduating. The article asks why Dr Parfitt chose the University of Reading for his PhD studies along with challenges he faced and advice for current 1st year PhD students.

CONVR 2013 – 13th International Conference on Construction Applications of Virtual Reality

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Laura Maftei, Dr Dragana Nikolic and Dr Maxwell Parfitt spent 2 days at the CONVR 2013 conference in London last week. The conference was informative, with presentations from around the field of Virtual Reality, including; Applications of Augmented Reality in Construction, New Techniques for gathering Building Information Models using both LIDAR and Photogrammetry, Applications of Multi-Agent Simulations for Crowd Analysis and Automatic Analysis of Safety Breaches using BIM.
There were great opportunities to network and discuss current research through meetings and break-out sessions with leading academics, industrial collaborators and senior members of the construction industry.

3D MOVE (Mobile Visualisation Environment) 3D Printed Parts

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To rapidly realise the low cost lightweight framework to support our 3D MOVE (Mobile Visualisation Environment) screens, 3D printing has been used to print custom durable parts to join different thickness’s of Composite Carbon Fibre tube.

The time-lapse video below shows a 27 hour 3D print run which produced the rear right bracket, printed upside down at the rear of the printer, the rear tube interconnect, printed vertically at the front of the printer and some miscellaneous parts used for calibration.

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Using 3D printing technology has allowed for quick design modifications at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional subtractive manufacture processes, whilst maintaining the parts strength and quality.