Visual and Virtual Production Management System for Proactive Project Controls
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 147, Issue 7
Abstract
Current construction still suffers from significant schedule delays and budget overruns due to inefficient and retroactive project controls programs. This paper developed a visual and virtual project control system that proactively promotes team-based planning and real-time communication of progress and schedule risk. The system benefits from the growth of visual data on construction sites and the increasing maturity level of building information modeling (BIM), to map the current state of production in 3D and expose waste. By modeling production trends, reliability in the future state of production is forecasted to highlight potential delay issues in a location-driven scheme. A visual 3D interface supports collaborative decision-making to eliminate root causes of waste, enables pull flows between people and information, decentralizes work tracking, and facilitates in-process quality control and hand-overs among contractors. This system was implemented on two projects to validate the underlying algorithms. Results show that the system’s functional aspects improve transparency, accountability, and traceability in project execution, and streamline communications between the field and the office. Specifically, 30% PPC increase and four weeks project completion date advance have been observed. Limitations such as resistance to workflow changes could be further improved in the future through early system introduction.
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Data Availability Statement
Data generated or analyzed during the study that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Specifically, the images, videos, BIMs, and schedules that are used to generate the visual production models, and the analyzed productivity data for predictive schedule analytics are available. The Journal’s data sharing policy can be found here: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29CO.1943-7862.0001263.
Acknowledgments
This material is in part based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation [1446765]. The support and help of contractors, subcontractors and service companies who were involved in collecting data and implementing the system are greatly appreciated. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the NSF, or the companies mentioned above.
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Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 147 • Issue 7 • July 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 2, 2020
Accepted: Dec 8, 2020
Published online: Apr 23, 2021
Published in print: Jul 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Sep 23, 2021
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