Paving the Path towards Efficient Construction Logistics by Revealing the Current Practice and Issues

Abstract

Multiple deliveries and long turnaround times on construction sites harm the environment and disturb on-site productivity and safety. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the transport patterns of construction material deliveries, including turnaround times. In order to investigate the number of transports and turnaround times, transport data for 13 Swedish construction sites, which were collected with the help of booking systems, were used. By comparing data from the cases, several patterns were observed: (i) very few projects receive deliveries at weekends, (ii) almost all projects receive 50% of their daily deliveries before 09:00, (iii) long goods, standard euro pallets and lightweight goods (less than 500 kg) are the most common deliveries, (iv) trucks and delivery vans are the most common vehicles used and (v) goods to be handled by crane and lightweight goods generate the longest turnaround time/delivery. This is one of the rare studies revealing current practice and issues associated with material deliveries, which is a necessary first step to increase efficiency of construction logistics. This study shows that it is possible to influence these issues, as some projects performed better than others regarding turnaround times and transport.

A longitudinal study on logistics strategy: the case of a building contractor

“…However, logistics is rarely addressed holistically in projects and instead the main contractor and sub-contractors manage their own material flows (Dubois et al, 2019). One effect of this is that planning methods are misaligned with material flow characteristics, leading to congestion on the site and poor resource utilisation (Sezer and Fredriksson, 2021). There is thus a need to consider contextual aspects that influence how logistics is organised, that is a contingency approach to logistics (Marchesini and Alcântara, 2016).…”

Rerouting urban construction transport flows to avoid air pollution hotspots

“…Although finished construction projects positively correlate with economically viable and growing cities in the long-term (Janné, 2020), the environmental impact of its logistics during the works cannot be ignored (Babak, 2017;Sezer & Fredriksson, 2021;van Lier & Macharis, 2016). With regards to off-site construction logistics (i.e.…”

Greening Construction Transport as a Sustainability Enabler for New Zealand: A Research Framework

“…Before the New Zealand context of freight transport is discussed, the peculiarities of construction transport need to be emphasised to provide context to the development of a research framework. Construction transport is a sub-set of freight transport however, it differs in terms of the impact of the nature of the CSC (primarily fragmentation and bespoke nature) (Alashwal and Fong, 2015;Guerlain et al, 2019b;Jones et al, 2021), peculiarities of employment patterns on a construction project Sezer and Fredriksson, 2021), the spread of transport configuration peculiar to the construction industry (Guerlain et al, 2019a), and the onus of managing construction logistics being on the construction industry and not those managing city logistics (Janné and Fredriksson, 2019).…”

“…A typical construction project may be divided into four cycles viz Site preparation, excavation, and ground works; Framing; Installation of services; and, Interior work. These cycles lead to the following pattern of employment of transport on a construction project: 1) Excavation works lead to a large proportion of transports at the beginning of projects, which decrease significantly after the first cycle; 2) Waste collection related transport increases from the second cycle; 3) Concrete is delivered mainly during the second and third cycles; 4) Transports delivering small packages mainly take place during the fourth cycle; and, 5) Transport related to support services are distributed in the first three cycles (Sezer and Fredriksson, 2021).…”