CCIS is housed within the Construction Engineering and Project Management (CEPM) program. CCIS has a separate identity and organization from CII, yet it maintains a close relationship.

CCIS has identified and maintained research in four thrust areas of pressing interest for the construction industry. The four thrust areas are:

1. Project Execution Practices
2. Economics, Finance, and Dispute Resolution
3. Construction Work Force Issues
4. Technology

For more information, see http://www.ce.utexas.edu/org/ccis.

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The Construction Automation Laboratory is located at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus, 12 miles north of the main campus. It is comprised of well over 3000 square feet of indoor lab space, indoor test facilities, and several acres of outdoor test fields. Computers in the lab are used for automated systems control, internal and external sensor data analysis, and documentation. A wide variety of software is installed.

The Construction Automation Laboratory has full access to well equipped machine and electronics shops within the University. The shops are available to fabricate, test, and modify mechanical and electronic parts.

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CEPM students also have access to the CAEE Department's third floor labs which house approximately 120 state of the art computer stations. Most run Windows NT, but MAC and UNIX operating systems are also supported.

While excellent public computing resources are available as described above, students are strongly recommended to purchase a notebook computer for their studies in the CEPM Program. Ethernet connections are conveniently available in the study carrel areas.

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CII represents a triad: its owner member companies, its contractor member companies, and academia, which provides expertise for the CII-funded research program. More than 20 U.S. universities are involved in the research program, including UT Austin. Personnel from the CII member companies guide and direct the investigations, while the university professors and their graduate assistants do the research, gather the data and perform various analyses to develop best practices for the industry at large.

Benefits

Since its establishment at UT Austin in 1983 by the CEPM program, CII has developed into a principal national forum for the engineering and construction industry. More than 800 volunteers from the member companies are involved annually in a variety of CII activities. Representing the best and the brightest from their companies, these individuals interface and network with their peers to gain unique insights into how other industry participants and other companies plan and execute major construction projects. Member companies benefit by having employees return from a CII experience better prepared and more knowledgeable about a variety of key topics. The universities involved in CII research benefit by garnering funded projects for their professors and graduate students, who have the opportunity to investigate timely research topics to benefit industry. The graduate students not only get to interface with industry experts in a team environment during the research, but enter the work force with a better, more in-depth understanding of the primary issues being addressed by today’s industry.

Core Processes

The six core processes that help focus the CII activities are research, implementation, education, benchmarking, globalization, and breakthrough.

The research is wide-ranging and covers topics selected by the CII members as timely and having potential to improve the cost effectiveness of the industry.

The implementation efforts by CII concentrate on getting the research results put into practice, and include mentors from the member companies who help others in applying the best practices to actual projects.

The education program takes the research results and uses them as the basis for several short courses that are conducted at UT Austin, Arizona State University, and Clemson University.

CII’s benchmarking efforts are aimed at determining "best-in-class" measures and providing comparative metrics with a database of almost 1600 projects that represent over $72 billion in total installed cost.

Globalization at CII includes not only a directory of experts in global construction, but Globalization Forums that bring the experience directly to attendees of the Forums to share planning, organizing, and cultural tips for those planning work outside North America.

Breakthrough efforts have recently brought about the creation of FIATECH, a consortium that is exploring the best ways to integrate technologies into the engineering and construction process. The Process Industry Practices (PIP) initiative is a similar effort that has its roots with CII; PIP is a consortium of leading process industry companies that are harmonizing various corporate standards into industry-wide standards. The goal of PIP is to make a single set of standards for the process industry that can be used on any and every project and thus make the industry more effective from planning through start-up.

CII is unique. Other industries and other countries from around the world view CII as a model of industry partnership. Owners, contractors, and academia work together to create a win-win situation and provide safer projects that deliver quality facilities on schedule and within the budget.

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