Theme: Research, Collaborating with industry for teaching and learning, Knowledge exchange

Author: Prof Balbir Barn (Middlesex University), Prof Tony Clark (Aston University), Vinay Kulkarni (TCS) and Dr Souvik Barat (TCS)

Keywords: Digital Twin, Model Driven Engineering, Inclusive Innovation

Abstract: Researchers at Middlesex University initiated a collaboration in 2011 with Tata Consultancy Services Research in India based on their research on lightweight methods for enterprise modelling. Since 2014, that initial introduction has developed into a sustained and ongoing collaborative research programme in programming languages and environments to support model based decision making in complex and uncertain scenarios. The research programme has supported annual sabbatical visits to the TCS research labs in India; a PhD studentship; and regular workshop/advanced tutorials at international conferences. The continuing programme is an example of industry based research problems driving academic collaboration in an international context that has led to over 30 research outputs, an Impact Case Study submitted to REF2021, a TCS software product and the establishment of the London Digital Twin Research Centre at Middlesex.

 

Introduction

This case study describes the outcomes of an ongoing collaboration between Middlesex University with Tata Consultancy Services Research, India’s premier software research centre. The collaboration initiated in 2011, was triggered by a research paper published by Clark, Barn and Oussena [3]. The research proposed a precise, lightweight framework for Enterprise Architecture that views an organization as an engine that executes in terms of hierarchically decomposed communicating components. Following a visit to the TCS Research Labs (TRDDC) in Pune, India, a joint research programme between TCS and Middlesex was established to further the notion of the “Model Driven Organisation”. A key feature of the collaboration was the notion of inclusive innovation, from problem location to shared mutual benefits. The research programme has supported annual sabbatical visits to the TCS research labs in India; a PhD studentship; and regular workshops/advanced tutorials at international conferences. The continuing programme is an example of industry-based research problems driving academic collaboration in an international context that has led to over 30 research outputs, an Impact Case Study submitted to REF2021, a TCS software product and the establishment of the London Digital Twin Research Centre at Middlesex.

Systemising a model for collaboration

In 2011, developing strong, sustained and inclusive model of collaboration with industry was seen as an important element of reputation building activities for Middlesex University as it set out to establish an overseas campus in India. The goal was that Middlesex should be seen to delivering impact both to project outcomes but also as value to the geographical setting of the collaboration.  Thus, in 2011, two senior academics, Prof. Balbir Barn and Prof Tony Clark embarked on a visit to India’s leading IT research centres including the Tata Research and Development Centre (TRDDC), IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Accenture Research, HCL Research, Infosys, Cognizant and others. At these visits, the senior academics were able to showcase Middlesex Computer Science research activities leading to two memorandums of cooperation with Accenture and TRDDC. Middlesex CS had also decided to establish a strong presence at India’s premier Software Engineering conference(ISEC) through research papers, tutorials, and the organising of workshops aimed at capacity building of Indian academia (Value in the process).

Further meetings with chief scientist – Vinay Kulkarni from TRDDC in 2012 at ISEC, led to the idea of collaboration around the notion of the “Model Driven Organisation” where an enterprise can be represented symbolically by a model that draws its information/data from range of software artefacts used by the enterprise in its daily operations. Executives are then able to use this model representation as a decision-making aid.

The collaboration was seen as a shared vision that would be beneficial to both partners (TRDDC and MDX) so at the outset, we agreed to make our joint research publicly available with both partners retaining the option to productise any research outputs. However, there was This collaboration can also be seen as a model for Inclusive Innovation in that the research roadmap references a problem from the “wild”, where key stakeholders are engaged equally from research problem formulation, through to research publications and where there are mutual benefits.

The collaboration also developed a way of working that was critical to its subsequent success. TRDDC supported travel and subsistence of Barn and Clark to its research labs in Pune on annual two week “mini-sabbaticals”. These visits which have run since 2012 to now (only coming to pause due to COVID-19) are linked to the ISEC conference where papers, tutorials and workshops have been regularly presented. There has been a strong focus on development of young academics in India at this conference, further establishing the impact of our inclusive innovation approach by generating value in the setting. While the primary interaction is with the TRDDC Software Engineering Laboratory, seminars and other research exploration opportunities are made possible by meetings with other laboratories (such as Psychology). Some of the annual meetings have been supplemented by further meetings at Middlesex. Each annual visit is an intensive research meeting from which emerges the research plan for the year alongside a publication and impact plan. Very early on, we recognised the potential for an impact case study for the periodic research evaluation exercise conducted in the UK.

 

Figure 1: Research Roadmap

 

Outcomes

The collaboration has proved to be singularly successful in delivering concrete outcomes. Our regularly updated research roadmap (see Figure 1.) has evolved from our initial concept of the Model Driven Organisation, through to a practical language (ESL) and execution environment for enterprise simulation and now to advances to methodologies for digital twin design.

Along the way, a TCS Research Scientist (Souvik Barat) has completed a doctoral study in the design of a modelling language to support enterprise decision making. This language would later contribute to work by Dr Souvik Barat to design a sociotechnical digital twin of the City of Pune, to support non-pharmaceutical interventions during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The ESL Language (lead Prof Tony Clark) developed as a TRL-5 prototype through the collaboration has formed the basis of a TCS TwinX™ software product developed by TCS and is now being used by TCS consulting.

The collaborative research programme has generated over 30 research publications at leading computing conferences and journal publications. Representative publications are listed [2,4,5,6]. The team has also generated impact and knowledge transfer through the production of advanced tutorials and workshops at conferences. The collaboration has also produced an edited book [7].

Recognising the importance of outcomes to the two respective organisations, the research has contributed to executing the research strategy of TCS Research (see strategy document) and has led directly to an impact case study submitted to REF2021.

Further value derived from our inclusive innovation approach has led to developing research publication preparation skills at TCS and even wider social impact through the pandemic planning activities in Pune City [1]. See the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x48G7-bOvPY).

In 2019, as our research work has steadily shifted towards Digital Twin technologies, Middlesex established the London Digital Twin Research Centre (LDTRC). The centre combines the software engineering research with cyber-physical systems and telecommunications research to present a means of showcasing a range of externally funded Digital Twin research projects. The focus of the centre has been brought to the attention of EPSRC and it holds regular business facing workshops.

Lessons learnt

Developing a strategic collaboration requires: investment from universities; a spirit that places collaboration and not competition at its heart, and willingness from academics to look for long-term benefit. Two senior academics spent three weeks touring Indian IT research labs with no guarantee of success. Hence, alignment with university strategy is critical.

Systemising this model of cooperation should be considered a strategic objective of UK Research and Innovation. A recognition that such success can be found in all our universities is imperative. While the EPSRC and RAE have “visiting academic-industrial collaborator” schemes they could generate much greater outcomes if their scale was smaller and they were genuinely accessible to all academics at all institutions.

References

  1. Barat, Souvik, Ritu Parchure, Shrinivas Darak, Vinay Kulkarni, Aditya Paranjape, Monika Gajrani, and Abhishek Yadav. “An Agent-Based Digital Twin for Exploring Localized Non-pharmaceutical Interventions to Control COVID-19 Pandemic.” Transactions of the Indian National Academy of Engineering 6, no. 2 (2021): 323-353.
  2. Barat, S., Kulkarni, V., Clark, T., Barn, B. (2019) An Actor Based Simulation Driven Digital Twin for Analyzing Complex Business Systems. Proceedings of the 2019 Winter Simulation Conference, 2019, Maryland, USA.(doi: 10.1109/WSC40007.2019.9004694)
  3. Clark, T., Barn, B.S. and Oussena, S., 2011, February. LEAP: a precise lightweight framework for enterprise architecture. In Proceedings of the 4th India Software Engineering Conference (pp. 85-94). ACM. (doi:10.1145/1953355.1953366)
  4. Clark, T., Kulkarni, V., Barn, B., France, R., Frank, U. and Turk, D., 2014, January. Towards the model driven organization. In 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 4817-4826). IEEE. (doi:10.1109/HICSS.2014.591)
  5. Clark, T., Kulkarni, V., Barat, S. and Barn, B., 2017, June. ESL: an actor-based platform for developing emergent behaviour organisation simulations. In International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (pp. 311-315). Springer, Cham. (doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59930-4_27 )
  6. Kulkarni, V., Barat, S., Clark, T. and Barn, B., 2015, September. Toward overcoming accidental complexity in organisational decision-making. In 2015 ACM/IEEE 18th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS) (pp. 368-377). IEEE. (doi:10.1109/MODELS.2015.7338268)
  7. Kulkarni, Vinay and Sreedhar Reddy, Tony Clark, and Balbir S. Barn, eds. Advanced Digital Architectures for Model-Driven Adaptive Enterprises. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-0108-5

 

Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professors’ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.

 

Theme: Collaborating with industry for teaching and learning, Graduate employability and recruitment

Author: James Ford (University College London)

Keywords: Civil Engineering Design, Timber Design, Industry, Collaboration

Abstract: A project, developed jointly by UCL and engineers from ARUP, allowed students to work on redesigning the fire damaged roof of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Industry expertise complemented academic experience in civil engineering design to create a topical, relevant and creative project for students. The project combined technical learning in timber design with broader considerations such as costs, health and safety, buildability and environmental impacts. Final presentations being made to engineering teams at ARUP offices also developed wider professional skills.

 

Background

Following the 2019 fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral, Civil Engineering Students at University College London (UCL) were tasked with designing a replacement. The project was delivered, in collaboration with engineers from ARUP, within a Design module in Year 2 of the programme. The project was run as a design competition with teams competing against one another. The project built on learning and design project experience built up during years 1 and 2 of the course.

The collaboration with ARUP is a long-standing partnership. UCL academics and ARUP engineers have worked on several design projects for students across all years of the Civil Engineering Programme.

The Brief

Instead of designing a direct replacement for the roof the client wanted to create a modern, eye-catching roof extension which houses a tourist space that overlooks the city. The roof had to be constructed on the existing piers so loading limits were provided. The brief recognised the climate emergency and a key criterion for evaluation was the sustainability aspects of the overall scheme. For this reason, it also stipulated that the primary roof and extension structure be, as far as practicable, made of engineered timber.

 

Figure 1. Image from the project brief indicating the potential building envelopes for the roof design

 

Given the location all entries had to produce schemes that were quick to build, cause minimal disruption to the local population, not negatively impact on tourism and, most importantly, be safe to construct.

Requirements

Teams (of 6) were required to propose a minimum of 2 initial concept designs with an appraisal of each and recommendation for 1 design to be taken forward.

The chosen design was developed to include:

Teams had to provide a 10xA3 page report, a set of structural calculations, 2xA3 drawings and a 10-minute presentation.

Figure 2. Connection detail drawing by group 9

 

Delivery

Course material was delivered over 4 sessions with a final session for presentations:

Session 1: Project introduction and scheme designing

Session 2: Timber design

Session 3: Construction and constructability

Session 4: Fire Engineering and sustainability

Session 5: Student Presentations

Sessions were co-designed and delivered by a UCL academic and engineers from ARUP. The sessions involved a mixture of elements incl. taught, tutorial and workshop time. ARUP engineers also created an optional evening workshop at their (nearby) office were groups or individuals could meet with a practicing engineer for some advice on their design.

These sessions built on learning from previous modules and projects.

Learning / Skills Development

The project aimed to develop skills and learning in the following areas:

Visiting the ARUP office and working with practicing engineers also enhanced student understanding of professional practice and standards.

Benefits of Collaborating

The biggest benefit to the collaboration was the reinforcement of design approaches and principles, already taught by academics, by practicing engineers. This adds further legitimacy to the approaches in the minds of the students and is evidenced through the application of these principles in student outputs.

 

Figure 3. Development of design concepts by group 12

 

The increased range in technical expertise that such a collaboration brings provides obvious benefit and the increased resource means more staff / student interaction time (there were workshops where it was possible to have one staff member working with every group at the same time).

Working with an aspirational partner (i.e. somewhere the students want to work as graduates) provides extra motivation to improve designs, to communicate them professionally and impress the team. Working and presenting in the offices of ARUP also helped to develop an understanding of professional behaviour.

Reflections and Feedback

Reflections and feedback from all staff involved was that the work produced was of a high quality. It was pleasing to see the level of creativity that the students applied in their designs. Feedback from students gathered through end of module review forms suggested that this was due to the level of support available which allowed them to develop more complex and creative designs fully.

Wider feedback from students in the module review was very positive about the project. They could see that it built on previous experiences from the course and enjoyed that the project was challenging and relevant to the real world. They also valued the experiences of working in a practicing design office and working with practicing engineers from ARUP. Several students posted positively about the project on their LinkedIn profiles, possibly suggesting a link between the project and employability in the minds of the students.

 

Figure 4. Winning design summary diagram by group 12

 

Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professors’ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.

Theme: Collaborating with industry for teaching and learning, Graduate employability and recruitment

Author: James Ford (University College London)

Keywords: Civil Engineering Design, Building Information Modelling, BIM, Digital Engineering, Industry, Collaboration

Abstract: This project, developed jointly with industry partners at Multiplex, allowed Civil Engineering students at UCL to develop their understanding and technical skills around the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) on civil engineering projects and related software. Students worked on a model of an emergency shelter (designed by UCL alumnus) and were required to consider the relevant parties involved (technical and non-technical), the information they require and how to utilise the model to organise and communicate this information effectively.

 

Background

Digital engineering tools and Building Information Modelling (BIM) are increasingly becoming important features of modern construction projects. The design teaching team in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE) at University College London (UCL) recognised the need to embed this practice into parts of the design teaching delivery for students on the Civil Engineering undergraduate programmes.

UCL and Mulitplex (civil engineering contractor) had been partnering on school outreach activities for several years. A discussion at such an event led to a realisation that there was good alignment on how these topics should be taught, with a focus on information and communication rather than modelling. Staff at UCL had already started developing a project that would involve using elements of BIM in the design development of an emergency shelter for humanitarian relief and that the project should encourage students to think about the information and communication aspects of this. The digital engineering team at Multiplex then agreed to join the project and provide technical assistance, to develop and deliver teaching materials and to provide real life examples and case studies to supplement the project.

The Brief

Students were provided with a pre-developed REVIT® model of an emergency shelter design made, predominantly, from timber. The shelter had been designed by a UCL alumnus during their time as a UCL student and agreement was granted to use it for this project. Students were presented with an imagined scenario that they were working for a charity that was planning to build 10 of these shelters in Haiti to assist with humanitarian relief effort following an earthquake. The students needed to consider which parties would need to be communicated with, what information they would need, how this information could be communicated with them and how the digital model could assist with this process.

 

Figure 1. Image of Emergency Shelter model in REVIT®

 

Students were encouraged to consider (but not limited to) included:

Students were required to research the relevant information and populate the REVIT® model appropriately and professionally.

Requirements

Teams (of 6) were required to provide a 10xA3 page report that would run through each of the potential parties to communicated with, what information they would need and how the model would be used to enable this communication. They also needed to describe any assumptions that were made and how information was selected during the research phase. They needed to highlight the critical thinking that had been carried out in relation to sources of information and its suitability and reliability.

 

Figure 2. Use of model to explain construction sequence

 

Teams also needed to submit their completed REVIT® model files for inspection as well as an 8 min video presentation that would:

 

Emergency Shelter Digital Design Project, A UCL / Multiplex Collaboration

Figure 3. External view of model

 

Delivery

Course material was delivered over 4 sessions with a final session for presentations:

Session 1: Project introduction and software introduction

Session 2: (i) Information and exporting in REVIT®. (ii) Commercial overview

Session 3: (i) Construction and Logistics. (ii) Health, safety and environmental factors

Session 4: (i) Handover requirements. (ii) Maintainable assets. (iii) Building management

Session 5: Student presentations

Sessions were co-designed and delivered by a UCL academic and a digital manager from Multiplex. The sessions involved a mixture of elements incl. taught, tutorial and workshop time that allowed students to work in their groups.

Learning / Skills Development

The project aimed to develop skills and learning in the following areas:

Benefits of Collaborating

The first benefit was the inspirational aspect of working on a shelter design that had been produced by a former UCL student. This Alumnus contributed to the introduction session by running through their design and this helped students understand just how much had been achieved by someone in their position.

The collaboration with Multiplex’s digital team brought obvious benefits to the technical skills development but also benefitted student understanding by showing how these skills are being used on live construction sites. The process of learning from and presenting to practicing construction professionals also allowed students to develop key professional behavioural skills that help develop and enhance employability.

Reflections and Feedback

Reflections and feedback from all staff involved was that the work produced was of a high quality and that this demonstrated an understanding of the project objectives from the student perspective. It was also apparent that students were becoming adept at using REVIT® software effectively and appropriately.

Wider feedback from students in the module review was very positive about the project and that it had improved their understanding of the role of digital technologies in the construction industry. Students said in feedback “BIM has helped us to look at all aspects of the design and to figure out more stuff in the same amount of time,” and, “Doing it this way [REVIT model] means you can see what you think might be a risk to the workers more easily.”

Several students posted positively about the project on their LinkedIn profiles, possibly suggesting a link between the project and employability in the minds of the students.

2 of the students successfully applied for summer internships with Multiplex’s digital team immediately following the project and were able to build on their digital engineering skills further.

The project was featured by trade magazine BIMPlus which ran an article on the project showcasing the relative novelty and uniqueness of the approach taken.

 

Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professors’ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.

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