Field construction management application through mobile BIM and location tracking technology

Abstract

While Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been increasingly accepted in the construction industry, the rich project information in BIM is still not well utilized to support the field construction management. Project managers need to spend significant time and effort to find out useful project information (such as plans and specifications) for field management, and communicate with construction participants in the site and offices. To avoid such inefficiency caused by separation between digital project information and field management, this study proposes an innovation that integrates BIM and location tracking technology for construction field management. We created a new management tool by integrating a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) location tracking system and a BIM environment. In addition to the visualization of a mobile BIM in hand, the developed system provides the users with real-time access to more contextual information based on locations of construction resources. The system has been demonstrated with a field trial at an indoor construction site. The result indicated that the integration of a tracking system in BIM 1) enabled timely visualization of a BIM model in hand, 2) provided immediate access to BIM data on site, and 3) showed the capability to interact with the model in real-time based on location information. Overall, the developed system showed the potential to improve the construction field management by bridging the BIM to the field through the BLE tracking system. Further, the real-time coordination of tracked resources and seamless communication of project information in BIM can significantly reduce the manual efforts made by the site managers and improve the project delivery efficacy.