Modelling the building cladding attainment processes

The cladding of a modern building is a critical, and expensive, specialist subsystem of the total building. This paper is concerned with modelling the supply chain processes within the building cladding sector of the UK construction industry. The modelling was conducted within the context of CIMclad, a research project involving a consortia of universities and industry that is seeking to move the cladding sector towards computer integrated design and manufacture. The goal was to better understand the existing supply chain processes. These processes are complex and span a diverse range of players, each of whom may play one or more roles. The methodology employed was a combination of informal mapping of the procurement chain and the application of formal process modelling techniques. Introduction The construction industry is under considerable pressure to improve its processes and to deliver better quality, cost effective, client satisfying and on-time construction projects (Construct IT, 1995; Construction Industry Board, 1997; DETR, 1998). Recent government-funded reviews (Latham, 1994; Egan, 1998) have highlighted the inadequacies of the business processes of the construction industry and outlined the considerable scope that exists for improvement. In response to this, many researchers have focused on modelling the industry’s business processes as a means of better understanding current practice and identifying specific processes that need to be re-engineered. Examples include: Froese (1996), Anumba & Evbuomwan (1996), Kamara et al (2000), and Austin et al (1999). While these efforts address aspects of the overall construction industry, there is very little work that focuses directly on the cladding sector. The cladding industry is relatively small industry, but is rapidly growing and currently accounts for over £2 billion worth of output per year in the UK (Agabasi et al., 2001). Leading companies from the cladding sector have joined with Leeds and Loughborough Universities to form the CIMclad initiative with the goal of putting the industry on the path to processes integration and increased processes standardisation, following the general trend in the construction industry at large. The construction industry is under considerable pressure to improve its processes and to deliver better quality, cost effective, client satisfying and on-time construction projects (Construct IT, 1995; Construction Industry Board, 1997; DETR, 1998). CIMclad was conceived to investigate the feasibility of improving the efficiency and competitiveness of the cladding sector through the development of a standard framework leading, ultimately, to computer-integrated design and manufacture of cladding. CIMclad selected as a pilot the particular class of building cladding known as “rainscreen cladding”. Also called layered cladding, rainscreen cladding comprises external decorative panels (that shed much of the rain and which can be made of a wide range of materials), an airgap, a vapour barrier and a supporting backing wall. The panels are normally supported off the backing wall by a grid of metal supports, typically the latter belong to a particular (proprietary) cladding system. The objective of the modelling work reported on within this particular paper was to represent and to better understand the existing supply chains within the cladding sector. In this paper we introduce and