Final literature review form (30 articles, 30%) using the formFinal literature review form.docx
The 30 articles in the final literature review form should be highly related to your research topic. For instance, if you choose to study BIM-based energy simulations, the 30 articles should be specifically related to this topic. Articles only generally related to BIM or energy simulations are not ideal to be put in the 30 articles. For this reason, the 30 articles in the final literature review form will be different from the 15 articles in your interim literature review form. However, if some articles in your interim literature review form are alreadly highly related to your research topic, you can list those articles again in your final literature review form.
Final research proposal (4500 words, which must include a literature review section of 3000 words, 30%)
review the research field in an informative introduction (1000 words)
Write an Introduction section which provides an overview and explaines existing research areas in your chosen research theme. For instance, if your research theme is 6D BIM, the Introduction should explain the definition of 6D BIM, why we need 6D BIM, the challenges/difficulties of using 6D BIM, and the major research areas in 6D BIM field such as data interoperability, BIM-based energy simulations, BIM-based building performance assessment, etc, supported by relevent in-text citations.
review literature specifically related to your choosen topic (2000 words)
Write a Literature Review section to review the 30 articles in your final literature review form. You should firstly identify the important aspects in your chosen topic. Then, explain what previous studies have done in each of the aspect. For instance, assume your topic is automated construction waste estimation based on BIM. In this topic, the important aspect is : what data is needed to estimate construction waste generation of a construction project; what equations we should use to estimate construction waste generation based on the needed data; what BIM application we should use; how we extract the needed data from the BIM model; how we insert the calculation equations into the BIM application to estimate; whether we need other software to complete the estimation. After you identify these important aspects, you need to explain how existing studies respond to these aspects. For instance, what data is used by the 30 articles you reviewed to estimate construction waste? What equations are used by them? What BIM applications are used by them? etc.
states and explain the research topic, aim/ question, with explainations of the innovation and significance of your chosen topic (1000 words)
Write a Research Aim and Significance section to explain your research topic, aims and significance. You need to firstly propose your specific research topic. Then, explain your research aims. Finally, explain what is new about your research proposal and why it is important. For instance, a research topic can be: Automated construction waste estimation of road projects based on BIM. Then, the research aims can be: 1) propose equations to estimate construction waste generation of road projects; 2) propose a streamlined BIM approach to conduct automated estimation based on the proposed equations; and 3) validate the proposed method through a case study in Adelaide. Then, you need to explain the innovation and significance of your proposed topic which can be as follows. Innovation: most previous studies focus on building projects but my topic focuses on road project which is my innovation. Significance: governments worldwide invest a huge amount of money on road infrastructures. By accurately estimating the construction waste generation from these projects, we can develop better strategies to manage the impacts of these wastes.
the methodological approach to be used to address the stated aim/question (500 words)
Finally, you need to write a Methodology section. Explain the following key aspects in this section: what data you need to conduct the study; where and how do you plan to get the data; and how do you plan to analyse the data. Data can be quantitative data such as statistical data, questionnaire data or measured data from experiements. Data can also be qualitative data such as transcripts from interviews, drawings of projects and images. What data do you need? Some study requires data to be collected from a city or country (where) through fieldworks (how), while some studies collect data from the internet such as statistical data collected from the websites of the statistical department of a country or World Bank (where) through manually downloading the data files (how). Where and how do you plan to obtain the data you need? We can also use quantitative methods such as statistical analysis (e.g. regressions and factor analysis), qualitative methods such as content analysis, or mixed methods to analyse the data. How do you plan to analyse your data?
You should use in-text citations to support your argument. You should have a reference list at the end of the final research proposal to denote the full referencing details of your in-text citations. Harvard referencing style should be used throughout the research proposal. Details regarding how to use Harvard referencing can be found hereLink.
All the word requirements above are minimal requirements. You can have longer research proposal the word number of which should not exceed 8000 words.
The word number of the Reference list at the end of your proposal is not counted in the 4500 word requirement.
The literature form and research proposal should be merged into a single document for submission.