Tracking the Location of Materials on Construction Job Sites
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132, Issue 9
Abstract
Automated tracking of materials on construction projects has the potential to both improve project performance and enable effortless derivation of project performance indicators. This paper presents an approach by which materials tagged with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be automatically identified and tracked on construction sites, without adding to regular site operations. Essentially, this approach leverages automatic reading of tagged materials by field supervisors or materials handling equipment that are equipped with a RFID reader and a global positioning system receiver. To assess the technical feasibility of this approach, a mathematical model has been formulated such that the job site is represented as a grid and the location of materials within the grid is determined by combining proximity reads from a discrete range. Field experiments were conducted using an off-the-shelf RFID technology, and several metrics were developed to quantify the field performance and compare it with the theoretical positional accuracy derived from the discrete formulation.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132 • Issue 9 • September 2006
Pages: 911 - 918
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Sep 14, 2005
Accepted: Jan 19, 2006
Published online: Sep 1, 2006
Published in print: Sep 2006
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