Urban construction projects are characterized by the lack of available space on construction sites. Due to the confined nature of such sites, construction materials, equipment and manpower must be managed within the same area, leading to frequent conflicts. As a result, the construction site layout and material logistics plans should be carefully coordinated to ensure a seamless flow of materials, equipment and labor. Existing studies focus on developing systems to address construction site layout planning (CSLP) and material logistics planning (MLP). However, such systems fail to address the mutual impacts and inter-dependencies between the site layout and material logistics plans. Furthermore, existing systems suffer from a lack of automation and inability to address construct...[ Read more ]

Urban construction projects are characterized by the lack of available space on construction sites. Due to the confined nature of such sites, construction materials, equipment and manpower must be managed within the same area, leading to frequent conflicts. As a result, the construction site layout and material logistics plans should be carefully coordinated to ensure a seamless flow of materials, equipment and labor. Existing studies focus on developing systems to address construction site layout planning (CSLP) and material logistics planning (MLP). However, such systems fail to address the mutual impacts and inter-dependencies between the site layout and material logistics plans. Furthermore, existing systems suffer from a lack of automation and inability to address construction delays. Therefore, this research aims to develop a framework for planning the site layout and material logistics on construction sites making use of building information modeling (BIM) technology. BIM has been used in the construction industry for over a decade, but its use in construction planning is still limited to clash detection and 4D simulation. BIM models however, are rich information sources and can be used for construction site layout and material logistics planning as well.

This research presents an automated CSLP framework and a MLP framework that are developed based on BIM technology. The first framework utilizes information stored in BIM models to estimate the size, type and number of temporary facilities required by a construction project during different time intervals. By leveraging the functionality offered by the Autodesk Revit application programming interface (API), several of the computations are automated, significantly reducing manual effort. The second framework is designed to integrate material quantity information from BIM models with construction progress data and material delivery information. This system coordinates material logistics along with the site layout, giving special emphasis on responding to construction delays. The two frameworks together can be used to facilitate CSLP and MLP on congested construction sites.