Automated construction project progress monitoring system

Abstract

Monitoring and controlling the project progress is gaining an increasing interest in the construction industry. Manual monitoring and control of project activities have not yielded the expected results. Therefore, monitoring the project progress together with the rapid use of information technology has prompted to change the practice in the construction industry. Additionally, manual monitoring is labor-intensive, because construction managers have to spend a lot of time on data collection and processing. Due to the problems in gathering of data, there is a need for having an automated project progress monitoring and evaluation system. Therefore, this study focuses on automation of project progress and evaluation system by developing a model which can measure and determine the project progress. Existing visual technologies and computer vision can achieve aforementioned aim by providing construction professionals 3-Dimensional types of models for user interface. Knowledge-based Expert system and software integrating techniques are employed in this research for achieving the objective of automation and the monitoring process. Digital photographs captured from the project site, AutoCAD drawings of the project and planned schedule of work in Microsoft Project are the fundamental building blocks for the development of the proposed model. Once the system is browsed, it automatically interprets the detail about the structural elements from planned schedule, 3D co-ordinate values from 3DCAD drawing and 3D model of digital images. To achieve the objective of developing the automated system, a simple rectangular section was selected. The 3DCAD model developed for that section and similarly the 3D model was developed by marking and referencing on digital photographs into Photomodeler. Microsoft Visual Basic 6 programming language is used to develop the user interface and for the integration of the information with Microsoft Project as well. Finally, the percentage progress of the project is calculated and can be viewed in Microsoft project. The development of such a model called Automated Construction PROject Monitoring (ACPROM®) may appear to be an interactive system and its feasibility and usefulness were demonstrated, tested and validated within the Malaysian Construction Industry. The ACPROM® system was validated by collecting data from projects in progress which include the planned schedule of work in Microsoft Project, AutoCAD drawings and digital photographs as progress continues. The result of the verification and validation showed that the ACPROM® system is feasible to be used in determining the actual physical progress reports by integrating digital photos and drawings. In this study ACPROM® system has been successfully developed which can be used as a vehicle for monitoring and controlling the physical progress by using computerbased applications.