Empirical Study on the Merit of Web-Based 4D Visualization in Collaborative Construction Planning and Scheduling
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 133, Issue 6
Abstract
This paper reports an empirical study that tested the usefulness of Web-based four-dimensional (4D) construction visualization in collaborative construction planning and scheduling. Several recent construction projects have employed 4D visualization to better understand the construction schedule and make proactive decisions to prevent logical errors in the construction sequence. Other groups have shown that construction information management with asynchronous Web-based communication can improve decision making among dispersed industry practitioners. It seems reasonable to anticipate that combining 4D visualization with Web-based information management would facilitate dispersed industry practitioners to make collaborative decisions for construction planning and scheduling. The empirical study presented here reports how experiment participants at separate locations collaboratively detected logical errors in a construction schedule when the 4D visualization model of the schedule was represented on the Web browser. Our results show that teams using 4D models detected logical errors more frequently, faster, with fewer mistakes, and with less team communication, than teams using 2D drawings and bar charts. These findings show industry practitioners empirical evidence that Web-based 4D construction visualization can improve team collaboration on construction planning and scheduling.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 133 • Issue 6 • June 2007
Pages: 447 - 461
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 28, 2005
Accepted: Jul 17, 2006
Published online: Jun 1, 2007
Published in print: Jun 2007
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