Visualization of Project Control Data: A Research Agenda

Over the course of a typical project, construction managers must interpret a great volume and variety of ever-changing project control data. Due to the volume of data, issues related to schedule, cost, resources or design intent are often overlooked, thereby resulting in the failure of judicious handling of important situations at any given point in time. We propose to use visual representations to clarify the complicated structure of data, eliminate confusing factors, and identify key elements. Several research efforts have been conducted to cope with the lack of visual representations in the construction management domain. However, most of these efforts have focused on visualizing either spatial building structures, sequence of construction activities, or construction operations. There has been little research efforts focused on information visualization in construction management. As a result, the construction management community is still faced with the problem of how to digest vast amounts of data and understand its complex intricacies in the dynamic and fragmented environment of construction; where data have a number of formats and are communicated through a variety of medium, which increases the potential of a communication breakdown among project team members. Some of the fundamental research challenges to be addressed in visualization of project control data include finding answers to several critical questions. This paper proposes a research agenda to the construction management community to encourage research in a variety of areas related to visualization of project control data.