4Projects involved in BRE-led Clouds4Coordination (C4C) project

A research project to coordinate construction in the cloud using building information modelling (BIM) includes Sunderland-based SaaS collaboration vendor 4Projects. The project is among 13 winners sharing in £5 million of grant funding from the Technology Strategy Board, reports Building4Change.

The Clouds4Coordination (C4C) project, which is led by BRE, will demonstrate how a multi-vendor cloud computing system can be used throughout the construction lifecycle, preventing single vendor lock-in and enabling a variety of cloud environments, accessible at different costs, to be used. Data sharing through C4C will be managed and provenance-tracked to automate coordination and staged data verification, which will be based on the BIM process model. Other partners in the project are Cardiff University, Costain, RIBA Enterprises, IBM, AEC3 UK, Lee Wakemans, and 4Projects.

Iain Gray, chief executive of the Technology Strategy Board, said:

“The market for cloud computing services is growing by 26 percent each year. It is an area with exceptional potential for growth. Finding the correct balance between trust and flexibility, without compromising security, is vital. Through this support we aim to help UK suppliers of cloud infrastructure and outsourced IT services to work together on the challenges that are holding-back the adoption of cloud computing, in order to capture a bigger share of this expanding market.”

Project contact for the Clouds4Coordination project is Nick Tune at BRE, which recently took on management of the UK Chapter of BuildingSMART (see December 2012 Building4change story).

4Projects is already engaged in another BIM-related research project, 4BIM (post), involving Northumbria University/BIM Academy, specialist technology consultancy AEC3, contractor VINCI Construction and construction products manufacturer Kingspan. I am hoping to get an update on these projects from 4Projects’ CTO Andy Ward in the near future.