Workspace planning in construction: non-deterministic factors

Technology Framework for Real-Time Assessment of Spatial Conflicts in Building Retrofitting

“…When the same workspace is occupied simultaneously by two or more activities, workspace interference occurs, leading to significant problems such as labor safety hazards, construction delay and loss in productivity. These kinds of interference have recorded impacts as significant as up to 65% productivity loss and a 30% delay to the entire project (Hosny, Nik-Bakht and Moselhi, 2020). A survey conducted by the Occupational Safety and Health Branch of the Labor Department of Hong Kong demonstrated that 79% of the fatalities that occurred in the construction industry during 2011 were related to workspace interference (Tao et al, 2020).…”

“…A survey conducted by the Occupational Safety and Health Branch of the Labor Department of Hong Kong demonstrated that 79% of the fatalities that occurred in the construction industry during 2011 were related to workspace interference (Tao et al, 2020). Spatial collisions that occur on construction jobsites are usually the result of poor workspace management and may pose several threats to the project performance (Hosny, Nik-Bakht and Moselhi, 2020). The widely used approaches are unable to avoid space conflicts.…”

“…For the aforementioned reasons, incorporating workspace consideration from the spatiotemporal perspective in construction planning plays a pivotal role. As of now, workspace planning is being performed through judgment or at most by the aid of 2D sketches (Hosny, Nik-Bakht and Moselhi, 2020), since commercial 4D visual planning tools (e.g. Autodesk Navisworks, Synchro) lack workspace management capabilities (Kassem, Dawood and Chavada, 2015).…”

“…A limitation of this research, recognised by the authors, is the fact that it does not include uncertainty, which inevitably affects construction activities. Towards this direction, the authors in (Hosny, Nik-Bakht and Moselhi, 2020) have developed an IFC-based software tool, using Blender game engine, in order to model workspaces probabilistically and to detect interferences from 4D models. The authors demonstrated that compounding effects of uncertainties may significantly affect the frequency and volume of overlapped workspaces in a project.…”

“…The bounding box method is most widely used in detecting virtual space collision; this method expands the space occupied by irregular objects and uses the convex surface in representation to simplify the collision detection algorithm (Ma, Zhang and Chang, 2020). Once collisions are detected, their severity must be computed in order to choose a resolution strategy (Hosny, Nik-Bakht and Moselhi, 2020). Digital twins have been introduced as the only approach that can reasonably deal with the complexity of processes involved in construction management.…”