We claim that such synthetic environment is augmented  reality. It is not just feasible, but it is also more effective than the more tra- ditional, well-established presentations on blueprints or on-screen projections.

The specific questions the paper asks are (a) does AR have poten- tial in structural engineering, (b) how big an improvement this tech- nology is and (c) what are the barriers to its adoption. To answer these questions we had to develop a methodology, which is generic in na- ture and applicable to other technology related research in the inter- disciplinary area of structural engineering and computer science.

1.2. On research methodology

A lot of research in engineering in general and in construction in- formatics in particular does not analyse existing phenomena, as is the case in natural sciences. Rather, it synthesises (creates) new solutions and improves technologies. Establishing success or failure of this kind of research is methodologically difficult for at least two reasons.

First, whatever the technology is doing to assist in the construc- tion process has already been done without that technology for decades or centuries. So naturally it can be done with some addi- tional help of new technology as well. It hardly can fail. In Karl Pop- per’s terms [17] the refutability of such research is questionable.

Second, researchers can create prototypes  that  prove  an idea but do not have the resources to create commercial grade software. Research prototypes lack robustness, friendliness and usability of commercial systems created by hundreds or perhaps thousands of programmers. Measuring the success of crude research prototypes does not do justice to the potential of the technology.

In our research this problem was addressed by an innovative com- bination of several evaluation methods, both theoretical as well as empirical. Theoretical foundations are set on phenomenology. It pro- vides philosophical basis for the hypothesis that augmented reality has a potential. A prototype was built. It was tested and studied in real life settings to assess the current technological capabilities and limi- tations. Finally the usefulness of the developed prototype was exam- ined by conducting structured interviews with potential end-users.

1.3. Paper structure

In the introduction the research context, goals, method and the hypothesis were defined. Section 2 presents the related work. Section 3 continues with the description of the design and imple- mentation of the prototype. Section 4 presents the theoretical self- evaluation of the developed prototype and the preliminary field tests. Those results were used as input data for the empirical part of the re- search – the survey – that is presented in Section 5. In the conclusions the results are analysed and the hypothesis is revisited.

2. Background and related work

In this section augmented reality is discussed from theoretical, technological and practical points of view. It explains our understand- ing of the building information modelling and its relation to construc- tion project documentation. As construction can be understood as the materialisation – physical realisation of the project documenta- tion [26,31,41], a philosophical discussion on relations among human mind, virtual and real environment is provided.

2.1. Augmented reality

Although virtual and real environments are two completely dif- ferent entities it is practically impossible to make a clear boundary between them. They can be better presented with two poles of con- tinuum [25], the real and the virtual. The virtual environment must be completely predefined since computers cannot make their own assumptions [16]. The real is a complex mixture of natural events and items that exist in one of the pole of the continuum. Reality, therefore, includes all that can be created, built, planned, observed, understood etc.

The other extreme of that continuum is a virtual environment, which allows engineers and designers to design objects in imagined, virtual, and designed, but not yet materialised world. Augmented re- ality is therefore the middle segment of continuum where virtual el- ements are added to real world [29].