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The ever increasing complexity of construction projects asks for improved communication and automated data collection supported by continually improving electronic tools. Advances in information technologies enable us to link critical resources on construction sites, such as trucks and cranes, to the project website creating many opportunities to drastically improve productivity, safety and quality. While the use of electronic equipment is nothing new in construction, no model exists to integrate them into one unified framework. This paper presents a wireless site-network concept consisting of information hubs enabled to automatically connect data sinks with sources supported by software agents. Included in this paper is the discussion of a mobile information hub, the eCKiosk, enabled to connect the work crew electronically to the project network while collecting automatically live "as-built" data. It begins with a review of long range wireless as the basis for designing a robust Agile Site Communication Network (ASCNet). Site experiments with short range wireless conduits and embedded RFID tags showed that they are able to provide information far beyond an identification number. While wireless technologies are poised to open totally new avenues to manage construction, more field-tests are needed to establish a solid knowledge base to create a pervasive network for the dynamically changing building site.

The Building Information Model (BIM) serves as a framework to align all the project-related data, providing interoperability to store and retrieve information interactively. Unfortunately, the construction site itself is excluded from this interaction as the large amount of data requires high data transfer rates and ruggedized hardware. However, advanced wireless communication technologies open radically new avenues to relay large amounts of data automatically and in near real-time. Construction could be a key beneficiary of these advancements. Wireless communication integrated with BIM, GPS and the Internet is able to provide the backbone necessary for creating intelligent systems, supporting the designer in his or her office as well as workers on the work-front. This paper presents a study that documents the development and testing of prototypes designed to facilitate information sharing at the field-level during construction. The main system constitutes an information hub, called the eCKiosk, connecting "senders and receivers" both on-site as well as off-site. The system design is discussed and some of the main modules are demonstrated. Since the electronic Kiosk depends on robust connections to the wireless devices distributed across the site, reliable connectivity is essential. For this reason, the discussion includes a study of the electronic signals behaviour in an ever-changing construction site. Measurements of the signal strengths during excavation and concrete work are presented and compared with theoretical calculations used to predict wave propagation. The results show how present models overestimate signal attenuation patterns on the construction site. This is important for designing a reliable and secure wireless site networks to link BIM to the work-front.

Construction projects require the generation and communication of an ever-larger amount of information. Unfortunately, present project organisations do not foster proactive approaches to preventing costly production waste derived from communication problems. To address this, the effective exchange of information needs to be performed across all different parties, as the construction project commonly includes concurrent progresses along its supply chain. This article proposes a new concept that integrates feed-forward control with the principle of network science. Referred to as supply-chain information network, it aims to comprehend the correlations within a sequenced supply chain network, in order to identify the critical communication links supporting a preventive control. Its effectiveness was verified by applying the model to an actual case: the rebar supply chain from a multi-story building in Sydney, NSW, Australia. The analysis recognised four problematical players in the supply chain: (1) rebar factory linemen, (2) radio crew, (3) senior steel fixers and (4) steel fixers, based on four centrality measurements. Consequently, the experimental data confirm the hypothesis that proactive management of the supply chain will produce drastic improvements, achieving up to 23.3% reduction in waste time during placement. The relevance of this research lies in the operational introduction of network science to the construction supply chain, and its proactive culture resulted in significant improvements of process performance. In addition, the developed communication backbone suggests an actualised test bed of concurrent information exchanges that tried to escape the spatiotemporal limitation in a chained attribute in the construction industry.

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