Construction workspace management within an Industry Foundation Class-Compliant 4D tool

Workspaces on construction sites represent a key resource due to their limited availability and impact on work progress and safety. The augmentation of traditional scheduling techniques (e.g., CPM, PERT) with both visualisation and new capabilities to address emerging challenges such as workspace management attracted a significant interest in recent years. Studies in this area addressed individual processes of workspace management such as workspace modelling and allocation and spatial conflict detection and resolution and were often performed in non-4D environments. This research presents the results from the development and evaluation of a methodology and an Industry Foundation Class (IFC) compliant 4D tool for workspace management. The methodology and the tool provide a holistic solution to the approach of workspace management through the allocation of workspaces to site activities, the detection of congestion, spatial and temporal conflicts and their resolution within a 4D environment in an interactive real-time manner, aided with analytic data from a centralised database.