Search

Featured Application: The proposed approach can potentially become one of path finding applications or add-ins of Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools. This application utilizes detailed daily or weekly construction plans to generate all possible evacuation paths of crews. Spatial movements of workers and equipment should be carefully planned according to project plans. In particular, it is crucial for workers' safety to prepare emergency evacuation paths according to changing construction site configurations and construction progress. However, creating evacuation paths for all crews for each day can be an extremely labor-intensive task if it is done manually. Consequently, in most construction projects, evacuation plans are not provided to managers and crews throughout the entire construction. Even state-of-the-art technologies do not suggest ways to generate evacuation paths according to changing progresses presented in 4-Dimensional Building Information Model (4D BIM). This research proposes a framework to automatically analyze, generate, and visualize the evacuation paths of multiple crews in 4D BIM, considering construction activities and site conditions at the specific project schedule. This research develops a prototype that enables users to define parameters for pathfinding, such as workspaces, material storage areas, and temporary structures to automatically identify the accessible evacuation paths. This prototype shows the secured evacuation paths in the 4D BIM environment and allows the users to organize the automatically generated evacuation paths. A case study using the BIM model of a real construction project involved in this paper demonstrates the potential of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scaffolds are frequently used in construction projects and significantly impact safety and productivity. However, in many construction projects, the decisions on scaffolds are often made without thorough spatiotemporal analyses considering the impact of the scaffolds on safety. Even with the recent advancements in building information modeling (BIM), potential safety hazards related to scaffolds are manually identified, and a handful of plans for scaffolds are then created and analyzed. To reduce the manual efforts and potential human errors, there is a need for innovation that assists in the decision-making for creating safe plans for scaffolds. This paper introduces a decision-making framework for scaffolding, which creates safe scaffolding plans without excessive manual effort and sacrifice of other important construction goals, such as cost and duration. The developed framework automatically generates multiple scaffolding plans and quantitatively evaluates them regarding safety, cost, and duration. The framework was implemented in a BIM software tool and validated with a real-world construction project. The test results demonstrate that the proposed framework can assist users to efficiently minimize safety risks associated with scaffolding without compromising construction workflow efficiency, cost, and duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction remains as a hazardous industry that can expose construction workers to fatal accidents and illnesses. With recent advances in BIM technology, project information in BIM can be analyzed in the early design and planning stages to address potential safety issues. However, despite the impact on safety and productivity of the entire construction project, temporary structures, such as formwork and scaffolds, are often omitted from drawings or BIM. In practice, it is challenging to consider temporary structures in current manual jobsite safety analysis which is time-consuming and error-prone. As a result, in construction plans, potential safety hazards related to temporary structures are unknowingly created which need to be identified and prevented during the construction phases. Focusing on scaffolds, this research integrates temporary structures into automated safety checking approach using BIM. A safety planning platform was created to simulate and visualize spatial movements of work crews using scaffolding. Computational algorithms in the platform automatically identify safety hazards related to activities working on scaffolding and preventive measures can be prepared before the construction begins. The algorithms were implemented in a commercially available BIM software as a plug-in and validated with a real-world construction project. The results show that the algorithms could identify safety hazards that were not noticed by project managers participating in the case study project. The simulated results are visualized in the developed safety planning platform to potentially facilitate early safety communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there have been significant advances in modeling technology for object-oriented building products. However, the building models are still lacking of providing construction-specific spatial information required for construction planning. Consequently, construction planners visually analyze building product models and derive geometric characteristics such as bounded spaces and exterior perimeter to develop detailed construction plans. Such a process presents fragmented information flows, from building product information to construction planning, that rely on subjective decisions of construction planners. In order to overcome these drawbacks, this research proposes a geometric reasoning system that analyzes geometric information in building designs, derives the construction-specific spatial information, and uses the information to assist in construction planning. The scope of presented work includes detecting work packages formed by faces during construction, such as large work faces and bounded spaces, and using information in the work packages directly to support planning of selected indoor construction activities. The main features of the proposed system named Construction Spatial Information Reasoner (CSIR) include a set of relationship acquisition algorithms, building component relationship data structure, and interpretation of the relationship to support detailed construction activity planning. The relationship acquisition algorithms identify adjacency between building components that is stored in the relational data structure. Then, acquired adjacency relationships are transformed into a set of graphs that represent work packages. To implement the proposed approach, CSIR utilized a commercially-available Building Information Modeling (BIM) platform and the algorithms were imbedded to the BIM platform. For validation, CSIR was tested on a real commercial building. For interior ceiling grid installation activities, CSIR successfully detected existing work packages and analyzed the spatial characteristics impacting construction productivity. The major contribution of the presented research would be to enable a realistic analysis of building geometric condition that is not possible in current BIM and a seamless information flow from building product information to construction process plans. These can potentially reduce current manual and error-prone construction planning processes. Limitations and future research suggestions are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its internal representation of a building, or, its building world, a robot can retrieve a building's information for task planning and execution. However, a building is a complex construct composed of thousands of sub-elements, therefore manually programming the complete lifecycle information in a robot can be impractical. Our study presents the creation of a semantic building world from a building information model (BIM) that can be used for robot operations. To describe static and dynamic elements, we create a Universal Robot Description Format (URDF) building world using the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) that a robot can directly query information for task planning and execution. As the case study demonstrates, our study bridges the gap between BIM's lifecycle information and robot operations. By allowing robots to acquire information about operating environments, the proposed methodologies provide the foundation for studies attempting task robotization in different types of facilities throughout their lifecycles. • Presented a framework that connects BIM and robot task planning and execution. • Generated a semantic URDF-based building world representation for robots. • Achieved enhanced description of static and dynamic elements of a building. • A robot retrieved building element information for task planning and execution. • Proposed BIM-robot integration, essential for robotization in built environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Temporary facilities significantly impact construction safety and productivity. [•] A platform for BIM-based automatic temporary facility planning has been developed. [•] Rule-based geometric reasoning and temporary facility design algorithms are shown. [•] Case studies which tested the new scaffolding planning software were presented. [•] Scaffolding location, design, schedule, and bills of materials were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major challenge toward construction robotization is a lack of a system that generates detailed behaviors of robots as part of the construction process based on information contained in building information modeling (BIM) and construction schedules. This study extends BIM to incorporate robot task planning and generate detailed motions conducting construction tasks. A prototype was built upon robot operating system (ROS), focusing on generating robot task plans for indoor wall painting. The prototype includes a converter that generates a ROS-compliant world file from industry foundation classes (IFC) file and sub-processes that conduct localization, navigation, and motion planning. A case study was conducted to demonstrate the system's capability to simulate behaviors of a painting robot and evaluate the performance within the context of the construction-related tasks. The case study demonstrates the proposed BIM-leveraged robot task planning can integrate construction and robotics domains to plan operations of autonomous robots in construction projects. • A novel BIM-integrated construction robot task planning and simulating system was developed. • IFC-SDF converter was developed to extract and convey the information from BIM to ROS framework. • This study developed ROS nodes to simulate a mobile robot for indoor wall painting • This study contributed to strengthening and extending the current boundary of BIM and robotics in the construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]