Dynamic quantification and analysis of the construction workspace congestion utilising 4D visualisation

Abstract

This work focuses on identifying and minimising workspace congestions between construction activities' execution space. It develops a methodology and tool to assist planners with the assignment of activities' execution space, as well as identification and visualisation of workspace congestion. A literature review of workspace planning techniques revealed that traditional workspace planning techniques might not be able to detect and resolve workspace congestions. This paper establishes a new concept for ‘visualising workspace competition’ between the progressing activities through a number of objectives. A Critical Space-time Analysis (CSA) approach was developed to model and quantify workspace congestions. Subsequently a multi-criteria function embedding spatial and schedule related criteria, was designed to measure the severity of workspace congestions. A dynamic 4D simulation environment was developed by utilising three workspace planning features, these are: the twelve execution patterns, the three different work rate distributions, and a time-based simulation of the progressing quantities of work. These were encapsulated in an innovative visual 4D CAD tool dubbed PECASO ( Patterns Execution and Critical Analysis of Site-space Organisation), which was developed and evaluated in a case study project. The paper concludes that the CSA approach reduces the number of competing workspaces and conflicting volumes between occupied workspace. The PECASO tool assists the planners' decision making to produce a better execution strategy for a given project schedule. It also contributes to future research and knowledge of 4D workspace planning.