Integrated EDM and 4D BIM-Based Decision Support System for Construction Projects Control

Hassan Mohamed Ayman,Sameh Youssef Mahfouz,Ahmed Alhady

doi:10.3390/buildings12030315

Abstract

Project schedule monitoring and controlling are critical challenges of construction project management that are not adequately implemented, likely due to the predominance of earned value management and the lack of utilizing technology, such as BIM tools. Unlike earned value, earned duration management (EDM) was developed, which includes several indices to track schedule progress and measure the performance of a schedule. The goal of this research was to establish a decision support system to track and monitor construction project activities during construction, with better performance and accuracy. A survey was conducted and distributed among ten site engineers, selected from different construction sites. The survey asked the site engineers about the possible durations of certain activities; based on their answers, the authors started the proposed system. In this study, we aimed to develop a decision support system (DSS), which combines BIM with EDM to help calculate probabilistic total project duration, visually detecting critical activities, monitoring visually risky activities subjected to delay and visually categorizing the accuracy of estimated duration for delayed activities.

Highlights

Construction projects that are behind schedule and over-budget are challenges that take place internationally
To the best of our knowledge, the research gap we found and address in this research surrounds the fact that there is no decision support system (DSS) that integrates building information modeling (BIM) along with earned duration management (EDM) to visually monitor construction projects
The combination of EDM and BIM used for monitoring the duration performance of building projects is one of the study’s primary contributions

Summary

Introduction

Construction projects that are behind schedule and over-budget are challenges that take place internationally. Earned value management is defined as “a management approach for merging scope, schedule, and resources for realistically monitoring progress of a project” by the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) guide [7] It has been used by a variety of organizations; Lipke [8] and Anbari [9] were the pioneer researchers who identified EVM in some executive cases. Bejarano [13] showed that combining Revit software and the EVM technique could be a valuable tool used to support a project’s temporal and financial visualization This combination is useful in analyzing the project performance and affords the possibility of making quick decisions and timely adjustments. To the best of our knowledge, the research gap we found and address in this research surrounds the fact that there is no decision support system (DSS) that integrates BIM along with earned duration management (EDM) to visually monitor construction projects.

Brief Literature Review

Project Control Techniques

Research Framework

Findings

Final Remarks and Conclusions