Design rules to improve efficiency in the steel construction industry

In steel construction projects, 88% of total decisions impacting cost are made during the design phase. These decisions are made by design professionals, who have neither the knowledge nor the experience of manufacturing operations. In manufacturing engineering, collaboration between designers and manufacturers is well established and formalized through different methods and design rules such as design for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA). These rules provide designers with essential knowledge to reduce the cost and time of manufacturing and assembly of parts during their design, while increasing customer satisfaction Building Information Modeling (BIM) and TFV Theory (Transformation Flow and Value) provide to the construction industry, tools and processes to improve collaboration between design and manufacturing phases while reducing waste during projects. However, BIM and TFV theory do not formalize collaboration between designers and manufacturers of steel structures. Yet, the lack of collaboration between these two phases causes lot of rework, lot of waste of time and material during projects. The aim this research is to develop design rules to overcome some of these issues. These rules use the information taken from the BIM model of 1000 steel structures from a steel manufacturer, to reduce the manufacturing time. These information are grouped and classified according to criteria evaluated using a neural network algorithm. In addition, the recent integration of artificial intelligence in construction projects provides industry with methods to draw from previous projects, essential knowledge for better decision-making. The research shows the strong dependence of the manufacturing time of the steel structures on the quantities of complete cuts and weld in full penetration and on the number of beams that do not come in right angles in the connections. © 2018 The Authors. Published by Diamond Congress Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2018.