A CLOUD BASED BIM FRAMEWORK FOR CONSTRUCTION SITE LAYOUT PLANNING

Srinath S. Kumar¹, Moumita Das¹, Jack C.P. Cheng², and Jun S. Kuang³

1) Researcher Assistant, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.
2) Ph.D., Assistant Prof., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.
3) Dr. Ir., Prof., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.

Abstract: Construction site layout planning (CSLP) is an important construction activity which involves and affects many project stakeholders. Therefore, communication and collaboration among project stakeholders are needed in CSLP so as to improve the overall productivity of construction projects. Building information modeling (BIM) has the potential to facilitate CSLP by providing accurate material quantity takeoff results and supporting simulations of construction processes and site layouts. However, the current BIM frameworks do not provide an integrated platform for capturing, managing, and exchanging the information required for generation of construction site layout plans. This paper presents a cloud based BIM framework, namely Social BIMCloud, which allows efficient management of BIM information and integrates the developed CSLP engine for generation of dynamic construction site layout plans. The framework also captures and manages the social interactions that take place in a collaborative environment for CSLP. The captured social interactions can be viewed and searched in a visual platform that was developed based on Autodesk Revit. Leveraging partial data exchange technique and open BIM standards such as IFC, building component information related to CSLP can be retrieved efficiently and data interoperability can be achieved in the BIMCloud framework. In addition, the framework is scalable and fault tolerant due to the use of a cloud based NoSQL database. A demonstrative example scenario is presented in this paper to illustrate the application of the developed Social BIMCloud framework for CSLP.

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Construction Site Layout Planning, Server-based BIM, Social Interactions

Bibliographical Reference:
Srinath S. Kumar, Moumita Das, Jack C.P. Cheng, and Jun S. Kuang. “A CLOUD BASED BIM FRAMEWORK FOR CONSTRUCTION SITE LAYOUT PLANNING.” In Proceedings of International Conference on Civil and Building Engineering Informatics (ICCBEI 2015), 49. Tokyo, Japan, 2015.

BACK