Javier Irizarry

Mobile application prototype for on‐site information management in construction industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study aimed at investigating the information requirements for broad use mobile applications for construction projects. It also presents the results of usability testing of a mobile application prototype for improving information management in construction projects.Design/methodology/approach – To achieve the research objectives, the information required to properly design the mobile application was collected by distributing an online questionnaire among construction professionals. Then a server‐based application prototype was developed based on enterprise content management concepts. The mobile application was tested in a laboratory by setting a group of construction management postgraduate students who had experience of working in the construction industry.Findings – This study determines and ranks the critical on‐site information artifacts, considered highly important from the perspective of clients, consultants, and contractors. The stu...

BIM and GIS Integration and Interoperability Based on Semantic Web Technology

AbstractWhen making design and construction decisions, planners must consider information from different scales and domains. Currently, building and geospatial data are shared and exchanged through a common data format, such as industry foundation classes (IFC). Because of the diversity and complexity of domain knowledge across building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) systems, however, these syntactic approaches are not capable of completely sharing semantic information that is unique in each system. This study uses semantic web technology to ensure semantic interoperability between existing BIM and GIS tools. The proposed approach is composed of three main steps: ontology construction, semantic integration through interoperable data formats and standards, and query of heterogeneous information sources. The completeness of the methodology is validated through a case study.

Applying advanced technology to improve safety management in the construction industry: a literature review

Technology application is deemed an effective way to further construction safety management. Various technologies have been adopted for construction safety, including information communication technology (ICT), sensor-based technology, 3S (GIS/GPS/RS) technology, radio frequency identification (RFID) and virtual reality. A review of previous studies in the area of technology applications for construction safety would be indispensable for the main stakeholders in this field to share innovative research findings and gain access to future research trends. A three-step method was used to obtain relevant publications (119 papers met the ultimate selection criteria) and compile a database of the findings. The results present a general review of technology application for construction safety from the aspects of number of papers published annually, publication type, publication name, country/region of distribution, research level, project phase and project type. Corresponding analysis was performed with the collected data and the radar chart was used for analysing the trend of technology application for construction safety and the trend of research topics. Five research gaps were identified in the review process. The trends and gaps can serve as motivation for researchers and practitioners to work on the next generation of studies and the development of future effective measures, which can ensure a safe construction environment.

Exploratory Study of Potential Applications of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Construction Management Tasks

Despite studies exploring potential applications of unmanned aerial systems (UASs), the particular use and value of visual assets (photographs or video) collected with UASs for construction management tasks is not well understood. This paper presents an exploratory case study to identify potential applications of visual assets obtained from UASs for construction management tasks. The case study involved the development of a visual assets database from UAS-based images and videos collected during UAS flights at jobsites in the United States and Brazil as well as semi-structured interviews with construction project personnel. The results revealed potential applications of UASs mainly for project progress monitoring, job site logistics, evaluating safety conditions, and quality inspections among other secondary management tasks. In addition, an analysis of costs related to the use of UASs was performed. The main contribution of this case study is a better understanding of the use of UASs for construction management tasks and their regulatory and cost implications.

BIM2MAR: An Efficient BIM Translation to Mobile Augmented Reality Applications

AbstractMobile augmented reality (MAR) provides an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use method of accessing information in an intuitive way by visually parsing the environment and relating information in the form of augmentations to specific objects in specific places through handheld mobile devices. With the architecture, engineering, construction, and operation (AECO) industry widely adopting building information modeling (BIM) technologies, this research contributes an efficient and cost-effective solution to integrate BIM into MAR by developing a method and workflow that practitioners can use to consolidate, optimize, and visualize their data and models in an MAR environment. Moreover, a real-world application of this method, called BIM2MAR, within facility management practices is described in this paper. In the future, this research will investigate the integration of the BIM2MAR method into cloud computing, as well as conducting user-centered evaluation.

UAS4SAFETY: The Potential of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Construction Safety Applications

Changing from day to day, the construction jobsite is in a constant state of flux. This constant change presents challenges for safety managers who must be able to foresee, as much as possible, hazardous conditions before they cause injuries or fatalities on the jobsite. Advances in information and sensing technology show promise in protecting workers from harm. However, they rely on data collection methods, which may not be fast enough to allow managers to act on the information they receive. This paper evaluates the potential applications that unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have for enhancing safety on construction jobsites by providing real-time visual access to jobsite environments. The type of UAS considered in this study is a quadcopter type system that can be piloted remotely using a smart phone, tablet device or a computer. The evaluation of the system consisted of a heuristic evaluation as well as a user participation analysis to determine the features of an ideal UAS for safety related tasks on construction sites. The results of the heuristic evaluation revealed some of the user interface challenges of the UAS interface considering safety related tasks. The user participation evaluation involved a simulated task in the controlled environment of the lab of determining worker compliance with the use of required personal protective equipment. This experimental approach revealed that using the UAS with a large-size interface on a tablet device would provide an accurate view of a jobsite that would be useful for safety related tasks. Recommendations for the required features of an ideal UAS for construction safety applications include autonomous navigation, vocal interaction, high-resolution cameras, and collaborative user-interface environment among others. The ultimate goal of this effort is to provide jobsites free of the hazards that affect the most precious resource of the construction industry, its workers.

Developing a Spatial Data Framework for Facility Management Supply Chains

Several studies have shown that the implementation of supply chain management (SCM) in the context of facilities management (FM) can resolve service delivery problems and provide significant benefit in cost savings and customer satisfaction. To fully utilize the benefits of SCM, the supply chain actors would require facilities’ data, suppliers’ information, and tools to share the information through a wide variety of users across the entire supply chain. Considering the wide range of spatial information used in the FM supply chain, this study develops a spatial data framework to manage data and disseminate information throughout a supply chain. The proposed framework uses building information modeling (BIM) capabilities to accurately provide existing information about the inside of a building and geographic information system (GIS) to support the wide range of spatial analysis used in the logistics perspective of the supply chain. Also, semantic web services are used to convey meaning and support the integration of information from all of these spatial, temporal and informational dimensions. The concept of the semantic web is applied in this study to provide semantic interoperability between BIM and GIS operations and to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology for the building and FM industries.

Mobile Applications for Information Access on Construction Jobsites

There has been a recent surge in the use of IT Applications in the Construction Industry; however, with the introduction of Smartphones these IT applications can be brought directly into the hands of construction personnel on the job site. This paper describes the development of two such applications, namely Construction Equipment Finder (CEF) and Be Safe on the iPhone development platform. While CEF focuses on enabling project personnel to find the equipment rental location closest to the jobsite without having to leave the work area, Be Safes focus is to provide access to safety-related information to the on-site construction personnel. The paper describes the design and development of the above applications using the iPhone OS Development Platform. Initial results show that the development platform has the potential to improve information access on jobsites by facilitating the development of application that provide enhanced information retrieval in multiple formats.

Investigating human and technological requirements for successful implementation of a BIM-based mobile augmented reality environment in facility management practices

Purpose – With the facility management industry increasingly adopting building information modeling (BIM) technologies, there is a need to investigate where this industry stands in its application. Moreover, studies on efficient and cost-effective solutions to integrate BIM and mobile augmented reality (MAR) present an environment where facility managers can experience an intuitive natural interaction with their mobile interfaces to efficiently access needed information. The industry’s view on this new approach of accessing information from BIM models should also be investigated, and its feedback should be considered for future phases of this avenue of research. Design/methodology/approach – This paper explores not only how BIM can be beneficial to facility management practitioners, but also how its integration with MAR and making the data accessible through handheld mobile devices can enhance current facility management practices. An online survey was conducted to assess professional facility managers’ c...

Digital Modeling of Construction Site Terrain Using Remotely Sensed Data and Geographic Information Systems Analyses

AbstractTopography and physical characteristics of a project should be considered in the preconstruction planning for any construction site. However, many of the technologies used for generating digital models of site topography rely extensively on project site surveys. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by improving the understanding of the nature and sources of remotely sensed data for construction applications as well as the accuracy of digital terrain models (DTMs) derived from remotely sensed data. Airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR), satellite imagery, and models provided by the USGS are three different sources of remotely sensed data that have been used in this study. It is expected that the research outcome will overcome some of the drawbacks of the existing methods for modeling site topography. The elevation values derived from these terrain models are compared with the values that have been measured in the field. The results indicate that the LiDAR-based DTM represents the ...