A BIM driven method for defining work activities and work zones of concreting works in Hong Kong building construction

Abstract

In Hong Kong, Building Information Modelling (BIM), which stores the project data such as quantity and size of building components, has been recently encouraged as part of tender documentation for visualising the architectural design and construction process. In practice, however, BIM has not been widely used for measuring building works. Instead, quantity surveyors often measure the quantity of concreting works based on 2D engineering drawings whereas a project manager usually defines the concreting work zones and work activities based on his/her rough productivity estimates and the measured work quantity. The potential of using BIM models to allocate resources for placing concrete has yet to be explored. As such, this research study aims to develop a BIM-driven method for extracting and deriving relevant information and data from BIM model and relevant site records to smartly define the work activities and work zones of concreting trades for constructing a 40-storey reinforced concrete building superstructure in Hong Kong. Firstly, BIM information of building components is extracted from Revit BIM models. The data is categorised by floor levels and component types. The quantity data of building components is summarised in association with the work zones and component sizes using clustering analysis. Then, as-built site records are used to extract the activity duration and worker number for concreting works. Next, regression models are developed to characterise the analytical relationships between work quantities, work duration, and worker number. Based on the BIM information and regression models, better resource allocation strategies can be suggested for defining work activities and work zones of Hong Kong housing projects.