Refurbishment of building services engineering systems under a collaborative design environment

In this paper hypermedia is suggested as a suitable paradigm to represent t he design processes associated with a shopping center refurbishment project . In addition, by adopting a collaborative design model, the paper makes re ference to such factors as synchronous vs. asynchronous and active vs. pass ive modeling. Concepts in complex problem solving are also explored such as the soft system methodology as well as the application of agent-based deci sion support systems. Identification of primary information elements and an alysis of the relations between these elements indicates that the flow of d esign information may be readily represented in hypermedia which features n onlinear characteristics in organizing information. The justification of de veloping a hypermedia tool to cope with changing conditions of a complex de sign problem instead of providing a solution for a predetermined problem is also argued. The paper illustrates the complex nature of collaborative des ign process with reference to a case study associated with the building ser vices systems design for a Hong Kong Housing Authority refurbishment projec t. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.