Towards a digitised process-wheel for historic building repair and maintenance projects in Scotland

With the increasing demand for high quality economical and sustainable historic building Repair and Maintenance (R&M) allied with the perennial problem of skills shortages (PM-project management and on-site practice) investment in new technologies becomes paramount for modernising training and practice. Yet, the historic R&M industry, in-particular Small–Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) have yet to benefit from digital technologies (such as laser scanning, virtual reality (VR) and cloud-computing) which have the potential to enhance performance and productivity. A qualitative participatory action research approach was adopted. One demonstration project (Project A) exhibiting critical disrepair, showcasing the piloting of a five phased digitised ‘process-wheel’ intended to provide a common framework for facilitating collaboration of project stakeholders thereby aiding successful project delivery is reported. Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with industry employers to facilitate the process-wheel concept development. Implementing only Phase 1 of the digitised ‘process-wheel’ (e-Condition surveying incorporating laser scanning) resulted in an estimated 25-30% cost and time savings) when compared to conventional methods. The accrued benefits are two-fold: (1) provide a structured standardised data capturing approach that is shared in a common project repository amongst relevant stakeholders; (2) inform the application of digital technologies to attain efficiencies across various phases of the process-wheel. This paper has provided original and valuable information on the benefits of modernising R&M practice, highlighting the importance of continued investment in innovative processes and new technologies for historic building R&M to enhance existing practice and in form current training provision. Future work will focus on further piloting and validation of the process-wheel in its entirety on selected demonstration projects with a view of supporting the industry to digitise its workflows and going-fully digital to realise optimum process efficiencies.