Integrated EDM and 4D BIM-based DSS for construction projects control

Abstract

In practical life, it is a big challenging dilemma that all building projects must adhere to the contract's deadlines. Today, most construction projects are delivered behind schedule. This is due to lack of well-organized tracking and monitoring for the projects and ensuring schedule adherence. Furthermore, the project control tools that are mostly used today, as Earned Schedule (ES) and Earned Value (EV), are not able to give exact indications of the project's performance in terms of time. The goal of the present research is to create a Decision Support System (DSS) for assisting contractors to track and monitor construction projects activities during construction in a more efficient manner. Moreover, it facilitates visualizing the performance of the activities through an integrated system based on Earned Duration Management (EDM) metrics and BIM environment. The proposed system combines EDM and BIM to achieve the research goals. By making a questionnaire for site engineers based on their experience, a Monte Carlo – based in the simulation process was conducted to obtain all various probabilities of this project total duration, at different scenarios. Afterwards, the project's duration was then calculated using Monte Carlo simulation to determine this confidence level of each duration, at different project phases. The results generated from both analyses were then visualized using a 3D model that enables decision-makers in taking the right decisions for their projects with no problems encountered. Based on the proposed system, a user-friendly tool operating in windows environment was developed using spread sheet to facilitate the analysis processes. To validate the model performance, real construction project data were used, in which the results were close to those of the real case study at each update. Finally, when the developed system was used to test its capabilities on real projects, it demonstrated a high level of dependability, visualization, and overall performance.