Tracking the Location of Materials on Construction Job Sites

Abstract

Automated tracking of materials on construction projects has the potential to both improve project performance and enable effortless derivation of project performance indicators. This paper presents an approach by which materials tagged with radio frequency identification ͑RFID͒ tags can be automatically identified and tracked on construction sites, without adding to regular site operations. Essentially, this approach leverages automatic reading of tagged materials by field supervisors or materials handling equipment that are equipped with a RFID reader and a global positioning system receiver. To assess the technical feasibility of this approach, a mathematical model has been formulated such that the job site is represented as a grid and the location of materials within the grid is determined by combining proximity reads from a discrete range. Field experiments were conducted using an off-the-shelf RFID technology, and several metrics were developed to quantify the field performance and compare it with the theoretical positional accuracy derived from the discrete formulation.

Analysis of the variability of RSSI values for active RFID-based indoor applications

“…Radio frequency identification (RFID) is one of the most widely used technologies and has been developing rapidly, to a global value of US$7.67 billion in 2012; it is expected to grow to $11.3 billion by 2015 (IDTechEx, 2013). Many researchers have focused on the applications of RFID technology and have proven that it has the potential to become pervasive (Domdouzis et al, 2007) for various purposes such as prefabrication control and management (Ergen et al, 2007;Yin et al, 2009), supply chain management (Song et al, 2006b;Kaneko et al, 2007;Wang et al, 2007;Ren et al, 2010), onsite (Song et al, 2006a;Song et al, 2007;Torrent and Caldas, 2009; or underground (Dziadak et al, 2009) materials management, tool management (Goodrum et al, 2006), safety management (Umetani et al, 2006;Chen et al, 2007;Wang, 2008;Chae and Yoshida, 2010), project process management (Chin et al, 2008), and facility management (Ergen et al, 2007b;Ko, 2009). Li and Becerik-Gerber (2011) provided a comprehensive review and performance analysis of RFID-based indoor location sensing solutions for the built environment.…”

The Autonomous Real-Time System for Ubiquitous Construction Resource Tracking

“…The importance of productivity improvements within the construction industry has been gaining significant interest (Park, 2005). Efficient management and monitoring of assets in a construction field is a significant contributor to overall achievement of the productivity (Song et al 2006). Construction materials and equipment account for a significant portion of the total cost of an industrial project (Kini, 1999).…”

Impact of Fast Automated Tracking of Construction Components on Labor Productivity

“…2006). Other research has analyzed the potential of combining RFID technology with localization algorithms to locate construction components (Song et al 2006;Grau and Caldas 2008).…”