Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent sustainable Construction - I3con

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SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION HANDBOOK 2 The use of specialist handling equipment to improve the speed and safety with which materials are moved around a large industrial construction project. 174 A delivery lorry from a consolidation centre that has been used to supply materials to the site of an office development. The lorry contains materials which have been called into site from by several different trades. It is evident that these three concepts of intelligence, integration and industrialization overlap, and are interdependent, in such a way that they cannot be implemented by any construction project team in isolation. Industrialization can be seen as a means for eliminating, or at least drastically reducing on-site activities in construction. Often, the driving force behind an industrialised approach to production is an overwhelming need for something in greater quantities, cheaper prices, better quality and reduced delivery times that current practices allow. This need drives innovation towards standardisation. However, once standardised products become the norm, a shift in expectations occurs. Customers start to expect bespoke products without increasing cost or wait times. The solution to this demand is a logistical innovation called mass customisation. Mass customisation requires modular architecture, standardised components and sophisticated information systems support, and these can only be delivered by the construction industry through integrated ways of working and the application of information and communication technologies. Computer modelling technology that extends beyond three dimensions is available to all construction project teams. Computer models enable project teams not only to design the product that the client ultimately receives, but also to design the production environment and logistics infrastructure, analyse traffic flows in cities, prototype the assembly process and attach a wide range of technical, commercial and operational information to each object in the model. This offers immense opportunities not only to better plan and control traditional ways of constructing the built environment, but develop entirely new methods of construction that embrace the opportunities offered by off-site manufacture. Of course, this approach is as much as an organisational and behavioural endeavour as it is a technical endeavour. However, in relation to construction project logistics, computer modelling offers enormous potential value for strategic design and planning of construction works and the day-to-day preparation and control of each construction task and its associated seven pre-requisites. There are also other key technologies that the construction industry can employ in order to help improve the way in which it executes projects. Economic growth and development are driven by what innovation theorists call general purpose technologies. A general purpose technology transforms economies, industries and societies. The wheel and the printing press were general purpose technologies, as was the railway of the 19 th century. The railway did not just get passengers from A to B faster than horses (and help address the environmental and social problem of manure in major cities). It consolidated nations and national
HANDBOOK 2 SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION markets, created new cities and enabled people en masse to leave their hometowns, therefore massively increasing the gene pool. Ubiquitous information and computing technologies (ICT) such as the Internet, the personal computer and mobile computing devices are general purpose technologies that are equally as transformative. Furthermore, these technologies are converging with each other and with other pervasive technologies such as satellite navigation and automatic identification. This allows objects and people to be connected at all times, and identified in terms of time, place and thing and offers enormous potential for improvement of construction project performance. This real-time visibility and availability of information everywhere will allow project teams to capture demand signals from the workface and make more informed decisions. It will also enable teams to capture and analyse the digital trails of assets, which will allow them to fine tune procurement scheduling, transportation, site distribution, storage and installation processes. For example, the Galileo satellite system, a joint venture between the European Commission and the European Space Agency, will employ a network of 30 satellites and associated ground infrastructure to pinpoint location within one metre. This will enable construction project teams to locate objects or people to a particular zone of a specific floor of a building under construction. Within this tracking environment, intelligent physical assets, embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags will be able to wirelessly communicate what they are, where they are, where they have been and their operational status, free from the constraints of distance and time. A construction site that employs RFID sensing technologies will be able to read tags on materials, plant and equipment as they arrive or leave site and automatically direct goods handlers to the point of use or the storage location. This information can then automatically update the project’s building information model and be linked to inventory management and automatic payment systems for the different companies involved in a project, for example. Conclusions Organisations involved in the creation of the built environment face increasingly demanding requirements for time, cost, quality, safety, social and environmental performance on their projects. In order to more consistently meet this diverse range of demands, construction project teams need to develop a clearer understanding of how crucial logistics is in successful project delivery, and make sure their approach to construction project logistics is correctly designed, planned and implemented. Project teams create value for a client by joining together the elements of a building or structure in a particular sequence, and each one of these construction assembly tasks requires seven key prerequisites to be in place – design information, components and materials, workforce, plant, tools and equipment, working space, connecting works and external conditions. If one of these seven inputs is absent or incomplete, then a constraint is introduced to the team’s ability to undertake an assembly task efficiently, effectively, safely and with minimal environmental and social impact. Logistics does not add value itself. However, intelligent, integrated and industrialised logistics enables value-creating work to flow by creating a production process and work environment in which construction assembly tasks can be undertaken efficiently, effectively, safely and with minimal environmental and social impact. The challenge for construction project teams is to develop a better strategic and operational approach to logistics by exploiting the enormous potential of general purpose technologies, adopting a more industrialised approach to construction by transferring activities from site to the upstream stages of the supply process, and using integrated ways of working that mean all parties have a common, shared understanding of what needs to take place, how it needs to take place, when it needs to take place and who needs to do it. 175
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