Building a project ontology with extreme collaboration and virtual design and construction

This paper defines the concept of the ‘tripod’ method of design that uses VDC modeling (multi-disciplinary performance-based virtual design and construction modeling), an integrated POP model (a formal and integrated model of Product, Organization and Process of the project) and Extreme Collaboration (a very rapid concurrent and technologically enabled social process of design). The paper focuses in particular on the generic ontology of the POP model, which specifies the related functional requirements, designed forms and predicted, observed and desired behaviors of the defined POP elements. With collateral drawings, models, analyses and explanations, the project specific POP model becomes the schematic and initial detailed design for the project. We describe use of the tripod method for the preliminary design of a large commercial building project. While large generic building project ontologies exist, e.g. the Industry Foundation Classes, we find that our ontology is so simple that teams using any design tools and methods can use it today, and it is helpful. We interpret our results as early evidence that the Tripod engineering process of VDC, Extreme Collaboration and use of a generic POP ontology together enable a design team to build a new integrated multidisciplinary project design model very rapidly. It can then be used to support downstream detailed design and construction planning and also reuse in other engineering projects. q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.