IMPLEMENTING VIRTUAL REALITY TO FOSTER CONSTRUCTION DEFECTS CHECKING AND REPORTING

Abstract

The scarce human workforce during the economic downturn and the COVID lockdown measures exposed the need for more reliance on in-person construction site visits. During the pandemic, the research team conducted a systematic review to investigate how virtual reality (VR) techniques can be applied to foster more effective construction defect checking and reporting. The findings indicate that VR technologies can be applied in marker-based inspection, which is crucial for developing the automatic defect recording and tracking system. Built on these findings, this paper reports a case study conducted in Melbourne, Australia, demonstrating how VR techniques can be applied to develop practical solutions for enhancing defect checking and reporting in an actual construction project. The solutions focused on reducing the time-consuming and inefficient manual tracking process. This study shows a step forward in assisting human judgment by resolving the in-person marker-based inspections and manual defect tracking encountered in traditional defect checking and reporting practices.