Abstract

We envision a future where cognitive technologies empower project teams to build smarter, greener, and more resilient environments—making every project a model of adaptive, data-driven excellence. This interdisciplinary research fuses smart data integration, digital cognition, and automation to optimise decision-making, reduce lifecycle carbon, and enhance the resilience of modern built environments. It includes three key subtopics that are interconnected with each other: (1) Perception: leveraging IoT, sensing technologies, robots, digital systems to collect data to systematically perceive data flow of process, material and carbon, project behaviours, and key performance indicators. (2) Learning: cognitive computing to make sense of project contexts, empower projects with cognition abilities to adapt project processes and structures with modern methods of engineering to enhance key performance indicators regarding cost effectiveness, safety, lean principles, and sustainability. (3) Actuation: Human-AI/Robot augmentation to (semi-)automatically implement optimised activities in dynamic and complex construction environments to improve the efficiency, safety, and sustainability of projects and organisations. The project will advance the cognitive abilities of project management organisations to help achieve lean principles in modern construction engineering.