Modular construction brings improved safety and mitigates risks of hazard and injury. However, modular construction technology is also challenged with a degree of uncertainty resulting from such internal and external factors as engineering, occupational, cultural, socio-economic, and financial. Since modular construction is by nature distinct from conventional construction, existing risk management research for onsite construction cannot be directly applied to modular construction. This paper describes research on the risk management associated with modular construction, focusing on: (1) identifying risk factors and (2) assessing the impacts of the identified risk factors on project cost and duration. The primary risk factors associated with modular construction are identified, and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is utilized to rank these factors; simulation techniques are employed to assess the risks of projects. The risk identification and ranking are evaluated by a focus group of experts from the modular construction industry; t-distribution and chi-squared distribution are applied to analyze the results. The case of a project in Edmonton, Canada is presented to illustrate application of the proposed methodology.
Modular construction is a dominant manufacturing method for industrial construction in Alberta, Canada. Modularization requires large-capacity mobile cranes to lift heavy modules, such as piperack modules. The current practice utilizes AutoCAD to generate heavy lift studies for modular onsite installations. Heavy lift studies consist of 2D and 3D simulations of the lifting scenarios, along with the corresponding calculations (e.g., lifting capacity checking, ground bearing pressure checking). These static simulations provide snapshots of mobile cranes at pick and set configurations, but they do not represent the movements between the two configurations. For better communication among site engineers and crews, current static heavy lift studies need to be improved by animating the entire lifting process. 3ds Max is an animation tool that can visualize the lifting process, but the tedious and manual process of preparing the animation restricts efficiency and productivity. This research thus introduces a newly developed animation system that automates the transfer of heavy lift studies from AutoCAD into Autodesk 3ds Max animation. Also in this research, the kinetics of mobile cranes are studied and generic crane movements are defined. Using MAXScript, a script is written to link the crane and project database for automatic generating of animations. This research aims to provide the construction industry with a generic method for automating the animation process for heavy lifts based on AutoCAD and 3ds Max systems.
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