ITcon Vol. 13, pg. 491-506, http://www.itcon.org/2008/29

Automatic generation of progress profiles for earthwork operations using 4D visualisation model

submitted:January 2008
revised:September 2008
published:October 2008
editor(s):Katranuschkov P
authors:Raj Kapur Shah, Ph. D. Student
Centre for Construction Innovation Research (CCIR), School of Science and Technology (SST),
University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, UK,
email: r.k.shah@tees.ac.uk

Nashwan Dawood, Professor
Centre for Construction Innovation Research (CCIR), School of Science and Technology (SST),
University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, UK,
email: n.n.dawood@tees.ac.uk

Serafim Castro, Dr., Director,
‘Mota-Engil’, Portugal. Tel. + 351 214 15862,
email: serafim.castro@mota-engil.pt
summary:Despite of the advances in construction planning and scheduling software, construction managers and planners are still facing problems in achieving accurate planning, scheduling and costing due to the one-off nature of the construction projects and the inherently uncertain site conditions and soil characteristics. The aim of the research presented in this paper is to introduce a new methodology for integration of ‘variable producti¬vity’ data with a visualisation model of earthwork operations. To achieve this aim, a number of objectives have been set: identification of current industrial practices and confirming the needs and aspirations of the industry, designing of a methodology and a model to integrated variable productivity with visualisation, and performing a case study to demonstrate and verify the model. The paper presents a prototype of a 4D visualisation model which is designed by integrating the road design data, quantities of cut and fill, productivity model, algorithms for modelling terrain surfaces and a progress profile visualiser. The model generates automatically terrain sur¬faces of progress profiles for earthwork operations and visualises progress profiles throughout the construction operations under different site and soil conditions. It is demonstrated with a real life case study in a road pro¬ject. The paper concludes that the model should be able to assist in producing efficient construction scheduling and resource planning, thereby reducing production cost and improving on-site productivity.
keywords:Earthwork progress profiles, terrain surface generation, variable productivity, 4D visualisation model.
full text: (PDF file, 0.374 MB)
citation:Shah R K, Dawood N, Castro S (2008). Automatic generation of progress profiles for earthwork operations using 4D visualisation model, ITcon Vol. 13, pg. 491-506, https://www.itcon.org/2008/29