4D BIM-Based Workspace Planning Process for Building Construction

Abstract

Each participant in a building construction project requires their own workspace to execute their activities. In this environment, inappropriate workspace planning in a construction site causes workspace interferences, which results in a loss of productivity, safety hazards, and issues of poor quality. Therefore, the workspace should be considered one of the most important resources and constraints to manage at a construction site. However, the current construction planning techniques—such as Gantt Chart, Network Diagram, and Critical Path Method (CPM)—have proven to be insufficient for workspace planning because they do not account for the spatial feature of each activity. In order to establish a formalized workspace planning process, therefore, this paper categorizes workspace by its function and relocatability, and suggests a workspace planning process that contains five phases, including 4D Building Information Model (BIM) Generation, Workspace Requirement Identification, Workspace Occupation Representation, Workspace Interference Identification, and Workspace Interference Resolution. The proposed planning process in this paper can improve the accuracy of workspace status representation and workspace interference identification by introducing the workspace occupation concept and the integrated workspace planning process that considers characteristics of activity, workspace, and construction plan. In addition, this paper aims to ameliorate the workspace planning process through path analysis and a formalized workspace interference resolution process. In order to scrutinize the applicability of the proposed approach, a case project was tested. The result shows the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method on improving the workspace planning process. Based on the result of this study, a project manager will be able to prevent possible workspace interferences and their negative effects on project performance by devising a pertinent workspace plan during the preconstruction phase.