Industrialized concept buildings such as Skanska's ModernaHus need advanced computer systems to support product configuration processes efficiently. The project phases composed of capturing requirements, design document creation, performance analysis, scheduling and all other activities need to be performed automatically at least to a certain extent in order to maximize benefits for the industrialized building process. This paper demonstrates the development of an automated building energy analysis software module which is going to be part of an experimental configuration system, based on the Skanska's ModernaHus concept buildings. The paper shows the process of software module development from specification, through the selection of system architecture and implementation to first results. The selected approach provides adequate level of flexibility to support re-use in a more complete experimental configuration system in the future. We conclude the paper with discussion on the software development, operation and integration of the module as well as on the first results of efficiency and on the possible further usage for design optimizations. We also show how future organizational and design team roles may shift from classic design tasks towards concept development tasks of product configuration systems when the goal is the implementation of industrialized construction processes.
Godkänd; 2010; 20101210 (tamrac)