A new approach for automation of location-based earthwork scheduling in road construction projects
Introduction
The construction industry has distinct characteristics in comparison with other industries in terms of one-off projects, site production, and temporary organisation [14]. The planning and scheduling process is a challenging task in the construction projects, and the decisions taken at the planning stage have the foremost impact on the successful execution of the project from its early conceptual stage to the completion stage [1]. Planning and scheduling include the precise allocation of the construction resources at the required locations and when necessary, particularly in the linear construction projects, such as roads and railways. Failure to allocate the critical resources of work activities at required locations has an adverse impact on the linear project performance such as cost, time, work-space conflicts and the safety of the workers at the construction site [16].
Arditi et al. [3] suggested that an earthwork project requires a separate planning task due to the distinctive characteristics of earthworks. The effective applications of planning and scheduling techniques: such as the Critical Path Method (CPM) and the Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) are limited, because the work activities associated with the linear projects are fundamentally different from the other projects such as high-rise buildings or residential houses. The majority of the work activities in a road project are linear in nature. A linear scheduling method has the potential to provide significant enrichment in terms of visual and graphical representation but currently it is difficult to provide the information of work activities and the possible time–space congestion on a weekly plan from location aspects. Although the linear scheduling method allows the project schedulers and the construction managers to visually plan the road tasks and determine the controlling activity path, it cannot provide the weekly information of the exact work activities' locations and allocation of the resources to be mobilised at the required locations, and the time–space congestion throughout the construction period [9]. Therefore, to overcome the above issues, a new methodology with a computer-based model, is introduced in this paper.
The approach, which is developed and underpinned within the prototype model, aids to generate more precise time–locations information, particularly in the earthworks scheduling in linear construction projects such as roads and railways. The key outputs of the model includes the generation of location-based earthwork schedules automatically, optimisation of earthwork quantities, and the allocation of the required recourses on a weekly basis from the location aspects. In this paper, the location-based schedule is dubbed the “time–location plan”. The remainder of the paper outlines the literature review, the design of the framework, and the prototype development, including inputs, processes and outputs followed by the case study experiments from a road project.
Section snippets
Literature review
Earthworks have unique characteristics and they take place normally at the early stage of the construction project, particularly in the linear projects such as roads, railways and pipelines. They constitute a major component in a road construction, absorb high costs, and deal with haul distances for balancing the cutting and filling sections in a cost effective way [13]. A study of 145 road construction projects revealed that the earthworks component was around 19.58% of the monetary value of
Framework of a prototype
The framework of a prototype model is outlined as shown in Fig. 1 by integrating the findings from the literature review and the construction industry survey [17]. The key input of the framework includes the road design data, sectional quantities of earthworks, productivity rates, unit cost of the cutting or filling activities, and an arithmetic algorithm. The model has several functions that include the visualisation of scheduling information, optimisation of the cutting and/or filling
Case study
A case study containing a 1.0 km section from the lot no. 3 road project in Portugal was chosen to demonstrate the functions of the prototype model. The road design data including L-section and X-sections, which are incorporated in the model, were used to compute the sectional quantities of earthworks assuming trapezoidal cross-sections at 25 m intervals along the road section, and these were used as key inputs of the model. The productivity rates of the earthworks such as cutting or filling
Conclusions
A computer-based model was developed with the aim of providing the weekly scheduling information of the earthwork operations more precisely in the linear construction projects such as roads and railways. The model was innovative by integrating the optimisation module and the time–space module besides the sectional quantities, the productivity rates, unit costs of earthwork, and an arithmetic algorithm. Numerous case study experiments from road projects were conducted to demonstrate the model's
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