BIM tool development enhancing collaborative scheduling for pre-construction

Abstract

Construction projects often suffer from backlashes in relation to poor plans and schedules. Especially pre-construction planning has been challenging due to a high complexity, an extensive amount of information, and a lack of site managers time to make the schedule. To solve these issues for pre-construction planning; new planning processes, methods and tools have been developed over the last decade. However, due to a disregard of the current planning processes these tools have been difficult to adopt in practice. In addition, these developed tools and methods are seldom developed from the user’s point of view. A promising development is the introduction of integrated planning as a concept in construction companies. It involves the use of BIM models in concert with a planning approach where the subcontractors engage in the planning. However, currently available tools are more geared towards experienced users such as expert planners and does not allow for a fully collaborative and integrated planning approach. While many current tools would tick many of the requirements identified, they still fail to address the base requirements from the collaborative work environment literature. This paper contributes with a user-centric design and development of a collaborative planning application showing the integration of the existing collaborative planning process. By adopting a socio-technical approach, the paper focuses on combining technology and processes supporting the users and their way of working in order to enable adoption of the solution. A design science research approach has been used to gather requirements and develop and evaluate the Visual Project Planner (VPP) application. The VPP application applies a collaborative, visual approach supporting interdisciplinary knowledge sharing between all parties involved where the subcontractors actively can contribute to schedule. The VPP application has potential to reduce time for pre-construction planning regardless of the planning approach used.

Realizing the Need for Digital Transformation of Stakeholder Management: A Systematic Review in the Construction Industry

“…Cooperative scheduling which includes subcontractor contribution is a rarely adopted method because collaborative interfaces and ICT tools are not user friendly for new or inexperienced users, so Tallgren et al [64] developed a web-based VPP application for collaborative BIM 4D scheduling which was used and evaluated on a real project case. Users stressed the improved legibility of the schedule as well as a better overview of the tasks and agreed that VPP really supports cooperative scheduling [64]. Another approach on a similar issue was the development of a web and database-supported visualization platform that enables real-time information sharing of daily 4D BIM.…”

Knowledge sharing in the construction supply chain: collaborative innovation activities and BIM application on innovation performance

“…In the collaborative innovation projects, member enterprises of the construction supply chain must carry out a substantial amount of information interaction and transmission, so efficient and accurate information transmission is an important guarantee for the achievement of a high level of innovation performance (Aibinu et al , 2020). BIM application can visually integrate and transmit a large amount of engineering information and can realize efficient and accurate information transmission and sharing with the assistance of network technology (Georgiadou, 2019; Tallgren et al , 2020). However, explicit knowledge in the construction supply chain can be transmitted through such information channels, while tacit knowledge is invisible and difficult to be transmitted directly through such channels.…”

“…A good information channel is an important condition for the achievement of a higher level of innovation performance. In the past, although enterprises in the construction supply chain had good intentions of collaborative innovation, the closure of information channels led to slow and distorted information transmission in the interaction process, which seriously affected the effect of collaborative innovation (Tallgren et al , 2020). BIM application can break the information barriers between enterprises in the construction supply chain, overcome time and space barriers in information interaction and quickly carry out information transmission (Cao et al , 2016; Chen, 2015).…”

Bayesian Monte Carlo Simulation–Driven Approach for Construction Schedule Risk Inference

“…Based on these data, many efforts have been made to manage the construction schedule and associated risks of infrastructures. Building information modelling (BIM) has been adopted as a powerful management tool for schedule planning (Liu et al, 2015;Tallgren et al, 2020), control (Moon et al, 2015) and risk management (Sami Ur Rehman et al, 2020). Based on that, extended reality (XR) has been further proposed to assist schedule control (Alizadehsalehi et al, 2020;Fu and Liu, 2018).…”