New Technologies to Re-Engineer Materials Handling on Construction Sites

Professor Iris D. Tommelein, Principal Investigator
Funded by a 3-year grant from the National Science Foundation, CMS-9622308, 1996-1999.

Project Summary

Construction sites are markedly inefficient in terms of where and how materials get stored and handled. Such inefficiencies have a major impact on site productivity. This is the case on large construction sites where travel distances are great and thousands of materials are being handled; it is especially the case on rehabilitation projects where existing facilities obstruct material flow and equipment traffic, where material deliveries and debris removal are constrained in timing because the facility often remains operational (in part) during construction work, and where shut-down time must be scheduled to cause minimal disruption to ongoing operations.

The main objective of this research is to develop a methodology and computer tools for field engineers to manage the flow of materials and equipment on site, in order to raise the overall productivity of the construction process. Planning the temporary storage layout and handling of materials greatly affects a project's overall productivity. It therefore critically determines the contractor's profitability and thus his competitiveness in the global market place.

The advent of new technologies (including wireless electronic data exchange, laser-based spatial positioning systems, and palmtop computers aka. Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs) combined with new management philosophies (including just-in-time vs. just-in-case and lean production) open up a wide range of possibilities to improve the construction materials management process. Accordingly, this research proposes to investigate their applicability and test how they can be used achieve the greatest improvements.

The proposed research will yield a modeling methodology combined with computer tools to manage the flow of construction materials on a site. A graphical language is introduced to model stationary resources at their layout locations and the flow of resources between locations. As part of this research, this language will be extended and implemented as an interactive computer-based tool-kit, to result in an interactive, graphical layout-and-flow-planning model. This planning model will be integrated with a real-time positioning system that works as a measuring device to record in real time the spatial coordinates of resources on site. Data collected using this integrated system, reflecting the actual site conditions, can then be compared to the planned layout and flow. Control decisions, on which resources to move and where to locate those that are yet to arrive to site, can then be made in a planned fashion. The planned new locations will be found on site using the same real-time positioning system, but this time used as a pointing device. With the cooperation of industry practitioners, the resulting model will be tested on selected construction sites.

Materials management systems that focus on cost accounting and resource identification and tracking are well established and have shown to pay off. A variety of techniques and tools (including time-lapse filming, discrete-event simulation, and resource balance charts) have been used to record, analyze, and critique ongoing construction processes in order to identify means to improve construction productivity. However, very little research has been conducted to date on modeling the flow of resources from their arrival to site and their distribution to layout, staging, and final installation locations. New computer- and laser technologies combined with new management philosophies now make it possible to effectively plan, monitor, and control such resource flow, in order to identify and eliminate sources of waste (loss of materials on site, damage, undue rehandling, etc.). Focusing on resource flow will change the way site operations are viewed by practitioners and civil engineering (construction engineering and management) students alike. The focus on resource flow has had a major impact in the manufacturing industry; it is likely to greatly benefit the construction industry as well.

Publications

Choo, H.J., Tommelein, I.D., Ballard, G., and Zabelle, T.R. (1998). "WorkPlan: Constraint-based Database for Work Package Scheduling." ASCE, J. of Constr. Engrg. and Mgmt., 125 (3) 151-160.
Choo, H.J., Tommelein, I.D., Ballard, G., and Zabelle, T.R. (1998). "Constraint-Based Database for Work Package Scheduling." Proc. Computing Congress '98, ASCE, 169-180; also Technical Report No. 98-1, Construction Engineering and Management Program, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
Choo, H.J., Tommelein, I.D., Ballard, G., and Zabelle, T.R. (1998). "WorkPlan Database for Work Package Production Scheduling." Proc. Sixth Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, IGLC-6, 13-15 August held in Guaruja, Brazil, 12 pp.
Sadonio, M., Tommelein, I.D., and Zabelle, T.R. (1998). "The LAST DESIGNER'S Database-CAD for Sourcing, Procurement, and Planning." Proc. Computing Congress '98, ASCE, 364-375; also Technical Report No. 98-2, Construction Engineering and Management Program, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
Tommelein, I.D. (1999). "Lean Construction Experiments using Discrete-event Simulation: Techniques and Tools for Process Re-engineering?" Intl. Journal of Computer-Integrated Design and Construction, CIDAC, 125 (3) 151-160.
Tommelein, I.D. (1998). "Pull-driven Scheduling for Pipe-Spool Installation: Simulation of Lean Construction Technique." ASCE, J. of Constr. Engrg. and Mgmt., 124 (4) 279-288.
Tommelein, I.D. (1997). "Using Palm-Top Computers in Teaching Materials Management." Proceedings Construction Congress V, Oct. 5-7 in Minneapolis, MN, ASCE, NY, NY, 405-413.
Tommelein, I.D. (1997). "Models of Lean Construction Processes: Example of Pipe-Spool Materials Management." Proceedings Construction Congress V, Oct. 5-7 in Minneapolis, MN, ASCE, NY, NY, 156-164.
Tommelein, I.D. (1997). "Discrete-event Simulation of Lean Construction Processes." Proc. Fifth Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, IGLC-5, 16-17 July 1997 at Griffith University-Gold Coast Campus, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, 121-135.
Tommelein, I.D. (1995). "New Tools for Site Materials Handling and Layout Control." Proc. Construction Congress '95, Ibbs, C.W. (editor), ASCE, New York, NY, 479-486.
Tommelein, I.D. (1994). "MoveCapPlan: An Integrated System for Planning and Controlling Construction Material Laydown and Handling." ASCE, Proc. 1st Computing Congress, ASCE, New York, NY, 1172-1179.
Tommelein, I.D. (1994). "Materials Handling and Site Layout Control." Proc. 11th ISARC, 24-26 May in Brighton, U.K., in Chamberlain, D.A. (1994). Automation and Robotics in Construction XI, Elsevier Science Publishers, 297-304.
Tommelein, I.D., Riley, D., and Howell, G.A. (1999). "Parade Game: Impact of Work Flow Variability on Trade Performance." ASCE, J. of Constr. Engrg. and Mgmt., 125 (5) 304-310, Sept/Oct Issue.
Tommelein, I.D., Riley, D., and Howell, G.A. (1998). "Parade Game: Impact of Work Flow Variability on Succeeding Trade Performance." Proc. Sixth Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, IGLC-6, 13-15 August held in Guaruja, Brazil, 14 pp.

New Technologies - NSF Grant / IDT / 8 February 2001