Aspects of Buildability for Automated Bridge Design

Paper in proceeding, 2025

Buildability and climate impact aspects are central in civil engineering projects, however, climate impact is not prioritized over buildability. Consequently, identifying designs that meet both buildability and climate impact objectives are challenging. Design automation with machine learning have been suggested as an approach, although a quantification of buildability is difficult. The purpose of this study was to explore practical buildability where the objective was to establish and list buildability aspects. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with experienced construction engineers. The result indicates that practical buildability encompasses systematic requirement management, capturing dependencies ramification, method decisions, design options, binary feasibility, resources, accessibility and availability, and time and schedule. Hence, a quantification could be possible, albeit specific for each buildability aspect.