Moving automated compliance checking to the operational phase of the building life-cycle: analysis and feasibility study in the UK

Abstract

Construction regulations ensure a base level of safety of built assets. Formal checking of built assets against regulations happens at defined points in their life-cycle, and often there is limited automation involved. The movement towards digitising and automation elements of physical site inspections paves the way towards a whole life-cycle approach for compliance checking. This paper explores whole life-cycle compliance checking. It does this by extending current checking processes which are common in the design and construction phases into the operational phase of the building life-cycle, proposing that the best way to achieve this is through automated/semi-automated data capture and analysis. To test the feasibility of this concept, this paper will review existing academic literature, analyse existing regulations and conduct proof of concept testing. This paper has found that the concept of whole-lifecycle compliance checking is becoming increasingly important to better monitor and assure high risks elements of the built environment. When applied to the operational phase, it, however, becomes impractical and expensive when relying on solely manual inspections. Furthermore, there is a significant quantity of viable use cases for this approach and that there are viable technologies to leverage them.