Researcher Highlights
Building better solutions to age-old challenges

Dr Sittimont Kanjanabootra is helping to streamline construction processes and practices to save time and money for hard-working manufacturing and building firms in Australia.

Construction has been a booming industry in Australia for multiple decades. But when demand and volume increase, communication and data management can buckle under the pressure.

It’s a problem that Dr Sittimont Kanjanabootra has encountered time and time again, first during his mechanical engineering career and now as an internationally esteemed educator and researcher.

“The pace of change and the volume of work in construction are not enabling practitioners to reuse their knowledge and expertise in an effective way, nor adopt newer, more effective solutions,” explains Sittimont.

Sittimont now collaborates with building companies to solve cost-based overrun problems. His solutions facilitate the transfer and use of knowledge with help from innovative technologies, such as big data applications, ontological analysis and knowledge management best practice.

“My research projects address those ‘same old problems’ in the construction industry.

“Problems like design errors, time delays, unsafe material being used, infrastructure project cost overruns and projects being overdue.

“My work is helping to solve these problems by developing industry-useable platforms based in tested and newly emerging technologies. This will change the nature of the industry and impact on the cost-effectiveness of its processes.”

Tackling ongoing stubborn industry problems

Sittimont entered the construction industry many moons ago as a practicing mechanical engineer. In his daily work, he would see common problems that he had no time to solve, but which eventually prompted his first step towards a highly successful research career.

“I began my academic research to address the problems I was seeing. My first project was with a group of engineers in an engineering manufacturing/building firm in Australia that had excessively long periods of time from prototype to market of their products.

“The problem lay in their complex processes and the way that the engineers were working, which did not allow them to capture their own knowledge and then use it in a more meaningful way.”

Sittimont explains that, in this particular case, the solution involved building an engineering knowledge management system.

“The system analysed the data captured, applied Heuristic Process Mining (big data) to their work processes and created a platform that enabled faster product development.”

Sittimont’s work continues to apply this same methodology to a variety of construction problems, working closely with building teams and firms to identify areas for improvement and create technologically driven solutions.

“Applications of innovative new technologies will enable improvement in construction expertise, how it is being developed, used and reused to solve day-to-day construction process problems.”

Removing traditional research blinkers

Sittimont strongly believes that interconnected education and industry problems require interdisciplinary responses. He has worked across a number of interdisciplinary research areas and projects, including as project team leader with international colleagues to develop a platform for Disaster Resilience Education Capacity Building in Latin America.

This project was funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and brought together researchers from the University of Newcastle, Universidad Diego Portales (Chile), Universidad Javeriana (Colombia) and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil).

“We tend to teach or do research in our area, and often, this creates a narrow view and blocks us from seeing beyond our discipline. We need to learn from each other and keep building our networks.”

Sittimont has also helped develop a platform of capabilities needed to implement Building Information Modelling (BIM) in construction projects, with funding from the Tasmanian Building and Construction Industry Training Board. Another of his projects with University of Newcastle and RMIT colleagues involved developing a simulation-based learning platform for tertiary education.

Across all his work, Sittimont is focused on creating tangible change for both the construction industry and his students.

“The work I’ve completed on shortening production times in the engineering company, and our work on applications of big data, have had, and are having, significant impact. Not only for industry but also for my students who get to see real practice, and real solutions to problems.”

New solutions and real-world impact

Sittimont draws inspiration from international research innovation, particularly in the USA and UK, where he says collaborative construction research currently receives greater interest and funding than in Australia.

“In the UK, there is a specifically funded research initiative for construction as a collaboration of universities, the government and the construction industry, to deliberately find, develop and implement solutions to transform the construction industry.

“This initiative was developed to address the problems already identified there—ones that also exist here in Australia.”

Sittimont is at the forefront of championing this research agenda in Australia, partnering with colleagues here and worldwide to achieve solutions and real-world impact. It’s a charge that continues to excite him, propel him into innovative new research areas and create enormous career satisfaction.

“Research that develops real solutions to known problems in construction is what excites me.

“Construction is an applied practice-based discipline, one where we almost universally adopt new knowledge created by materials scientists and engineers. Being the facilitators of that transfer involves creativity, a lot of thinking and is rewarding.”