Keynote speakers focused on communication at jobsite

Keynote speakers at the Texas A&M College of Architecture’s 17th annual faculty [research symposium] (http://one.arch.tamu.edu/news/2015/9/10/annual-college-symposium/) showed how visualization and communication tools can address problems at construction jobsites.

[Carrie Dossick] (https://faculty.washington.edu/cdossick/) and [Gina Neff] (http://www.com.washington.edu/neff/) , faculty members at the University of Washington, presented "Design in the Details: Buildings, Technologies and the Practices of Team Communication,” Monday, Oct. 19 in Preston Geren Auditorium, located in the Langford Architecture Center’s Building B.

The UW professors head the Project on Communication Technology and Organizational Practices, a research group that studies the innovations communications technology brings to complex building design and construction.

Dossick and Neff have spent eight years researching the thorniest problems regarding teamwork at construction jobsites. Their presentation examined the difficulties created by work practices, drawing sets and written specifications developed for 2-D designs that often don’t work with 3-D models and building information modeling processes.

Dossick, an associate professor of construction management and civil engineering, also directs the university’s Center for Education and Research in Construction. Her interests include emerging building methods and technologies such as [integrated project delivery] (http://www.aia.org/contractdocs/aias077630) — a collaborative design and construction process — and [building information modeling] (http://www.archdaily.com/302490/a-brief-history-of-bim) — which yields digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of places.

She also investigates technology and collaboration strategies for “green” building design and construction, using BIM at the construction site with an iPad, and applications for BIM and Construction Operations Building Information Exchange, a building dataset that can be viewed with design, construction, and maintenance software and spreadsheets.

Neff, an associate professor of communication and sociology, also examines how new communication technologies change industries. She has authored the books “Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries” and “The Quantified Self.”

She studies the impact of social media and consumer health technologies on primary healthcare. In addition to being published in numerous academic outlets, her research and writing have been featured in [The New York Times] (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/fashion/sundaystyles/30CANDY.html?oref=slogin) , the [Christian Science Monitor] (http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0305/p13s01-wmgn.html) , Fortune, The American Prospect, and The Nation.