CONNIE - Construction News and Information Electronically

Connie will extract, organise and index the relevant information from existing publicly available European building regulations and standards into value–added task-specific information and practical know-how for construction professionals and deliver the information as networked electronic cross-border services scalable in content across the EU. In conjunction with this the project will provide value-added news on developments related to their profession.

With the adoption of CEN standards as national standards, designers need to re-evaluate their knowledge and re-educate. The regulation framework is changing fast to reflect the new CEN standards and this is a challenge to most countries, especially the new member states.

CONNIE will develop and demonstrate commercially viable cross-border services to bring the targeted information and news to the construction professionals using the best available, ICT technologies. The service will provide cross-border content by re-indexing regulations text, reorganising, cross referencing, provide explanations and examples. Ontologies will be used to point users to the right place in the regulations across the different countries. Tools will be developed for news capture, personalization and localization to provide concise, targeted, relevant knowledge used by construction professionals.

The construction industry sector represents some 11% of GDP and employs 11 million EU citizens (97% of the 2 million organisations have less then 20 employees). The constructional professionals involved in design and construction would be the target users of the services, with the information provided by the service representing value-added information, contextualisation and relevant news.