Identifying tower crane activities with data: the case of the concrete pouring
Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management
ISSN: 0969-9988
Article publication date: 12 October 2022
Issue publication date: 1 February 2024
Abstract
Purpose
The crane plays an essential role in modern construction sites as it supports numerous operations and activities on-site. Additionally, the crane produces a big amount of data that, if analyzed, could significantly affect productivity, progress monitoring and decision-making in construction projects. This paper aims to show the usability of crane data in tracking the progress of activities on-site.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a pattern-based recognition method to detect concrete pouring activities on any concrete-based construction sites. A case study is presented to assess the methodology with a real-life example.
Findings
The analysis of the data helped build a theoretical pattern for concrete pouring activities and detect the different phases and progress of these activities. Accordingly, the data become useable to track progress and identify problems in concrete pouring activities.
Research limitations/implications
The paper presents an example for construction practitioners and researcher about a practical and easy way to analyze the big data that comes from cranes and how it is used in tracking projects' progress. The current study focuses only on concrete pouring activities; future studies can include other types of activities and can utilize the data with other building methods to improve construction productivity.
Practical implications
The proposed approach is supposed to be simultaneously efficient in terms of concrete pouring detection as well as cost-effective. Construction practitioners could track concrete activities using an already-embedded monitoring device.
Originality/value
While several studies in the literature targeted the optimization of crane operations and of mitigating hazards through automation and sensing, the opportunity of using cranes as progress trackers is yet to be fully exploited.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Data availability statement: Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are proprietary or confidential and may only be provided with restrictions.
The authors would like to thank the industrial partner Bouygues Construction for supporting the research done in the Construction 4.0 Chair of Centrale Lille. This industrial research chair is also co-financed by the European Metropolis of Lille and the European Union with the European Regional Development Fund.
Citation
Danel, T., Lafhaj, Z., Puppala, A., BuHamdan, S., Lienard, S. and Richard, P. (2024), "Identifying tower crane activities with data: the case of the concrete pouring", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 939-956. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-10-2021-0936
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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