Integrating BIM and VR for Highway Construction Site Layout Planning

Traditionally the layout plan of temporary facilities for road construction sites was mainly based on expert experience. However, the complicated terrain conditions made it difficult for project managers to comprehensively understand the geographical features of the site. The site layout plan often did not apply to the actual construction process, resulting in loss of time and cost. To provide an intuitive, immersive virtual environment to support experts’ experience in the site layout design, this research proposed a framework of a decision-support platform that combined building information modeling (BIM) and virtual reality (VR) technology. This paper described the architecture and modules of the platform, as well as the application process, functions and implementation process. The proposed platform enables project managers to interactively place temporary facilities in the integrated model of highways and surroundings in the virtual environment; generate and compare alternative site layout schemes with automatic calculation according to preset criteria.