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Qianyun Zhou (second from right) and Lingming Kong (third from left) receiving a certificate and trophy from Ir Albert Cheng (third from the right), Executive Director of CIC, witnessed by Prof Wilson Lu (second from left), Professor Frank Xue (far right) and Dr Junjie Chen (far left).

Two PhD students from the Department of Real Estate and Construction at HKU, Qianyun Zhou and Lingming Kong, were awarded the Young Innovator Prize (Student) at the 2025 CIC Construction Innovation Award, receiving a prize of HK$100,000 on 21 January 2026.

Organised triennially by the Construction Industry Council (CIC), the CIC Construction Innovation Award recognises groundbreaking innovations in Hong Kong and worldwide with strong potential to advance the construction industry through technological innovation, sustainability, and practical impact.

The students were awarded for their research project titled “Bridging LLM (Large Language Model) Agent and OpenBIM for Energy-Efficient Building”. The project introduces an intelligent, LLM-based agent that supports energy-efficient building design through a coding-free and highly interpretable workflow.

The key innovation of the project lies in mobilising LLM agents to interpret building design optimisation, alongside extending OpenBIM schema to incorporate design intent and LLM-generated semantics. This integration enables traceable design parameters and clearer documentation of design rationale, supporting more efficient approval processes and stakeholder consensus. The research has the potential to reduce lifecycle energy use, lower electricity costs, and cut carbon emissions. The project was praised by the international judging panel for its originality and real-world applicability.

The team also found that external competitions are valuable opportunities for PhD students to extend their current research to meet industrial needs. For example, this award programme offers a chance to demonstrate how AI adoption can be advanced across the design process through close interdisciplinary collaboration. Looking ahead, they hope the project can contribute to AI-empowered smart construction and accelerate practical OpenBIM-based workflows.

“Bridging LLM (Large Language Model) Agent and OpenBIM for Energy-Efficient Building” won the Young Innovator Prize (Student) of the 2025 CIC Construction Innovation Awards.