Page 131 - Kaleidoscope Academic Conference Proceedings 2020

TOWARDS A DIGITAL PROCESS PLATFORM
FOR FUTURE CONSTRUCTION SITES

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Hans Aoyang Zhou ; Aymen Gannouni ; Thomas Otte ; Jonas Odenthal ; Anas Abdelrazeq ; Frank Hees 1
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Institute of Information Management in Mechanical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
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Institute for Machine Elements and Systems Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
ABSTRACT planning of the project scope. This results in delays, as well
as additional production costs and thus leads to limitations
When it comes to digitalization, construction sites are still with regard to the productivity and efficiency of the overall
at the beginning of an ongoing transformation process. construction process.
Two major causes are the complexity of construction site Widening the view towards the overall productivity of
environments and the lack of interoperability between the construction processes in Germany, it can be observed that
different actors, such as machines and site suppliers that the labor productivity in the national construction sector has
are involved in the construction project. This has direct increased by less than five percent between 1991 and 2015,
implications on the efficiency, quality, and production time while the average increase over all economic sectors can be
of construction projects. Thus, there is a strong need to fill amounted to approx. 40 percent in the same period [1]. We
this digitalization gap by considering the latest advancements state the hypothesis, that this deficit can be partly assigned
in the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as edge and cloud to a lack of digitalization in the construction sector, more
computing. In this paper, we suggest a data-driven approach specifically regarding the involved production processes,
for construction sites, in which we extract data from machines, compared to other industrial sectors such as manufacturing.
send it to a central data storage with scalable computational Our point of view is supported by two studies that also
resources and analyze it to improve the existing construction conclude a digitalization deficit within the construction
processes. For that, we studied requirements of selected industry (cf. [2], [3]). The mentioned studies underline the
construction site processes and designed a communication industrial relevance, as well as future economic development
architecture that scales with the complex characteristics of potentials, with regard to the digitalization of construction
real-world applications. Additionally, we propose a digital sites.
process platform that supports a wide range of users with their On current construction sites, machines from different
different roles on construction sites and builds the foundation manufacturers and dynamically changing constraints, as
for further research, implementation, and evaluation of well as environment states form a complex CPS involving
according construction site innovations. With the proposed characteristic features, such as, heterogeneous data (e.g.,
platform framework, we extend the construction site towards sources, types) and interfaces (e.g., communication
an integrated Cyber-Physical System (CPS) and contribute to standards).
the standardization of communication infrastructures within In our research work, we develop a manufacturer-independent
the construction sector by merging different solutions from and modular communication infrastructure in order to address
the area of information and communication technologies. the existing data and interface heterogeneity on construction
sites by making use of a technology mix consisting of edge
Keywords - construction site,data integration, digital
computing, cloud computing, mobile communication, as well
platform, digitalization, scalable communication
as big data technologies in one common communication
infrastructure
infrastructure for future construction sites. Furthermore,
we develop a digital process platform in which the entirety
1. INTRODUCTION
of working processes related to the construction site can
be depicted as digitalized construction processes including
Current construction projects are often characterized by
modules, such as, the site monitoring (e.g., progress,
segmented process chains with mosaiced contributions of
efficiency) or the process data analysis along with selected
various disciplines participating on the construction site. For
real-world use-cases.
example, in a road construction project, different process
In this way, we integrate an entire data analysis process
steps, such as material transportation, cement mixing, and
consisting of the steps acquisition (on-site), collection
road compaction are dependent from each other, but are often
(off-site), semantic integration (off-site), processing
conducted by different companies, construction workers, or
(off-site), as well as online visualization and analysis
machines with multiple resources. For these interconnected
(off-site). The joint constellation of communication
processes, interfaces for informationexchangeand integration
infrastructure and digital process platform serves as a
are not yet standardized. This leads to an increase in project
foundation for the decision support of responsible actors on
complexity and thus complicates a precise estimation and
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