The design of human-information interfaces for visual production management in construction

Abstract

This thesis reexamines the current bottlenecks of production management in construction and designs the key human-information interfaces within a new visual production management (VPM) system for proactive project controls on construction site. A comprehensive contextual inquiry of utilizing VPM in planning and coordination practices is performed to analyze the key functions and workflow in order to reach VPM’s full potential to improve communication, coordination and planning in construction. The result shows that to realize VPM system for project controls in construction requires (1) real-time progress information that reflects the status of construction; (2) location-based data analytics that promotes collaboration among subcontractors; (3) accurate model breakdown structure that reflects the plan in production level; (4) centralized information that tracks issues and enables easy access and (5) simple visual indicators (traffic sign metaphor) that communicates performance status. While the VPM supports above features through 4D visual production models assembled via superimposing of 4D BIM and 4D point cloud data, proactive project control metrics, production level 4D BIM model, task constraints and delay root-causes annotations and progress/productivity/risk reports on color-coded visual production models, it lacks a framework that allows real-world implementations. To address this limitation, this thesis presents a framework to implement the VPM system in the planning and coordination sessions to improve the collaboration between subcontractors and contractors. To evaluate these results, several case studies were conducted on real world commercial building projects.