The consortium Ediltecnica Global Service is a modern cultural and operating laboratory highly specialized. Ediltecnica has over seven decades of experience in the enhancement of the Building Heritage, particularly if historically esteemed, through the maintenance, restoration and creation of value, with all the technical and technological skills to act in terms of preservation and conservation of buildings, respecting and enhancing their history and identity. Ediltecnica has expertise in engineering and restoration to traditional workmanship and materials, however, the company does not think that the restoration can be reduced only to materials chemistry, but that artistic human ingenuity is still at the base.
In restoration of an historic building, the central role is the time of knowledge, that is not only the initial, but it should be repeated in the course of the work. It needs an attitude of systematic, also to set up and manage the next Conservation Plan Schedule.
In Ediltecnica’s vision analysis and restoration are both key and complementary moments to carry out effectiveness and respect of history. Knowing the events that have affected over time the manufact on which you operate and the characteristics of the materials and techniques used, through careful research, makes the intervention more precise. For this reasons Ediltecnica choses to create a software-based organization in order to be able to manage these two phases directly on the inside and with their own resources. An integrated view of aspects, often separated from each other, with the support of a structured organization that invests in professionalism, in research, technology more sophisticated and advanced diagnostic analysis, in control of security and the environment. When the action relates to the historical and architectural heritage is important to prevent damage and prevent the radicalization of pathological situations: a structured practice of inspections, diagnostic and maintenance would contain the cost of the restoration, in order to limit the invasiveness and to extend the time interval that elapses between an operation and another. Above all, however, a precise care of historic buildings would avoid the risk of losing a unique and irreproducible heritage.
Associated with this, there is the need to collect through an organized way all the information resulting from the activities and the preventive maintenance, as well as the restoration already made.
Ediltecnica carries out a constant monitoring of the condition of the asset, and the gradual layering of data, describing the time course of the phenomena. This constitutes a necessary step to properly assess the severity of deterioration, providing for the onset and course, and to set up and manage the following Conservation Plan Schedule.
The software that Ediltecnica adopted is SICaR. It was developed inside the OPTOCANTIERI project (2003-2004) as a tool to plan and manage restoration work, mapping and geo-referencing data over an exact and measurable model of the artwork. SICaR is an internet-based system, which can be used both to consult and insert data, without installing any software. It can interoperate with any data and information available on the web (ICCD catalogues, Risk Map of Cultural Heritage, pre-existent documentary archives, etc.); it accepts standard architectonic drawings (dxf); it allows to map areas and connect them to forms describing scientific analyses, typologies of deterioration and related repairs activities; it estimates surfaces and costs. SICaR is in the process adopted by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage (MiBAC). A revised edition of the system is being readied by the authors together with the Istituto Centrale del Restauro, in order to offer users a standardized lexicon and a unified structure of restoration data. New functions for the monitoring of the restored artwork is currently under development.
This software allows the computerized management (design and implementation) of the Conservation Plan. This document is necessary in case of execution of restoration of listed buildings in public ownership. It is an effective tool for managing the flow of information and activities even in the case of goods covered by private property. The use of an archiving software lets you record any intervention and variation in time to the project executive, while you collect data and documents from the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage, from the Project Manager, from the workforce and from all professionals working on the project. The documentation of the final design will be comprehensive and updated to ensure effective implementation of the construction.
The set of technologies implemented includes the use of laser scanners, digital photogrammetry, digital technology BIM.
In particular in Italy, recently, after the agreement between the State and the Regions, signed in 2001, were created many regional GIS for cultural heritage, to gather information on the state of the buildings, both for the management of processes and activities restoration. The most interesting and current initiatives have been implemented with the aim of finding a common precept that reveals the ability of the system to meet the different goals, which are: first, to create a meaningful content that is as broad as possible, in line with adequate standards (not only conform to the standards of the Italian “Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation” - ICCD, but based on the need to obtain the restoration and conservation of the art). On the other side, the GIS for the built heritage, were made with the aim of developing a tool fully implemented and interoperable to support conservation activities, which can be integrated with the tools deployed in planning procedures everyday.
At the national level the Ministry of Culture and Environment, is developing and increasing the national catalog of GIS architectural heritage, called “Information System General Catalog (SIGEC)”, and is promoting among professionals the use of GIS tools, to collect data on conservation activities.
Ediltecnica is implementing and experimenting the use of these managing instruments in the pilot site of Palazzo Guiccioli in Ravenna, in collaboration with the Faculty of Engeneering of the Univerity of Ravenna. Ediltecnica knows that there is the need to develop the existing document management software of the restoration sites, the complete data acquisition from the preliminary analysis and diagnostic to the site preparation, this in order to use the database management software conservation planning after the intervention.
Ediltecnica notes the necessary production of “as-it-is”, for what concerns the conservation actions in sites, that do not provide the installation of plants (such as boundary walls or archaeological sites) and “as-built” for restoration of buildings with plants, to emphasize the different approach in buildings with external systems to view or internal. The creation of a library as-it-is and as-built means the production of a photographic collection, in support of the final design, which allows detailed viewing in the first case the result produced by the intervention of conservation in order to draw in years, just updating the camera, the degradation of the object of intervention, in the second case to preserve the memory of the arrangement of plants in each compartment of the architectural structure.
The production of an as-built documentation consists of a set of technical-descriptive and photographic, describing the work as it was actually built. This allows the computerized management of the Conservation Plan. The documentation can be collected mainly through two instruments. In both cases, this timely acquisition of the material has to be made during the execution phase, while the processing of point clouds or the modeling of three-dimensional models can be made at the time of the actual need of the material or the preparation of the Conservation Plan. This practice consists in ‘storage postponing the return to the time when a compartment is affected by important problems found or need for changes, the relative cost of post-production will be negligible compared to the wealth of information obtained.
For the production of as-built, the survey on the building is achieved by using: the 3D laser scanning, giving the possibility to realize a relief not deeply accurate, but ensuring the production of an accurate 3D model; photogrammetry, which allows the integration of photos that allow the creation of 3D models through the use of a modeling software.
The acquired information, that will compose the as-built, consist of reports, surveys, drawings, reports on the building and on the conditions of the site, photos or videos. All materials collected becomes a searchable database useable to create the Conservation Plan Schedule. To process the Conservation Plan Schedule, using as a reference the models borrowed from the content of the Maintenance Plan, we want to get the association of the maintenance activities to the elements of the assets. In this way you can automatically obtain the program of maintenance and/or conservation to be made in a given time interval. The set of maintenance scheduled will then be displayed in a Gantt, which, in turn will allow the engineers in charge of organizing all these activities.
One of the ways to signal the need for maintenance operations is to submit a specific request to the office in charge of maintenance. A quick and effective way that we use to forward the request is represented by a call center through which a subject, enabled or not (depending on the policies adopted by the company responsible for maintenance), manages to convey the request directly to the technicians directly concerned, obtaining in exchange traceability and visibility of the advancement of advanced reporting. This module could be integrated into the software management of information flows.
Clearly, in this Front End mode, there is a corresponding mirror of Back End activities, which cares to manage the reception, sorting and filing of requests received from users, allowing technicians in charge of distributing all those activities that lead to the maintenance operations. These Requests received can transform into provisions of Inspection, Work Orders to be assigned to internal teams or external companies selected for this purpose, ensuring a constant and automatic communication to the actor in the original report that in this way will be able to see that the action has effective progress and conclusion.
[by Annaclaudia Cicognani]