Construction World September 2018

limit when it comes to possibilities for digital solutions, but progress is slow. Saving time and money Lassi Järvinen sees that the whole production chain, from prefab- rication to logistics to the construction site, will work a lot more efficiently in the future. ”It’s all about accessing and processing data. Not only data from the companies involved, but from the surroundings as well, for example, traffic.” Seppänen notes that another important tool that works very well with new technology is takt time. It is the average time between the start of production of one unit and the start of production of the next unit, when these production starts are set to match the rate of customer demand. ”The idea is to minimise the time wasted. This needs real-time data since everything has to run like clockwork.” The examples are impressive. BMW in Germany and Skanska in Norway were able to reduce construction time by 50% with takt time planning and execution. The construction business is often viewed as a slow-changing industry. Järvinen and Seppänen recognise this stigma and encour- age everyone to look beyond this. New technology benefits the whole business. ”It is in everyone’s interest to reduce waste in time, money and materials,” Järvinen concludes. Lift-ups “The construction site should be controlling the precast factory by ordering exactly what is needed to be delivered exactly when it is needed.” The hypothesis of iCONS is that if everyone has access to data that shows where the people, materials and tools are, it saves a lot of time and wasted effort at the site. 

However simple it may sound, it is a big step forward if everyone at the construction site is able to check where everything is. ”Workers are able to work much more efficiently and management is able to monitor the situation in real-time. For example, if you can see that the tools, the materials and the workers are in the same space, you can assume that work is going on.” Modelling on the go iCONS is about locating things. The follow-up project ReCap is about being able to monitor not only the situation, but also the progress of the project. In current construction, the company gets a progress report typi- cally once or twice per month. ReCap provides information in real-time. “For example, we can equip a crane or a drone with a cam- era that takes pictures of the building. A 3D model of the building can be created and compared to the BIM model in real-time. This makes it possible to react immediately if something is wrong,” Seppänen explains. The third research project, DiCtion, sees big opportunities in task assignment, logistics and waste reduction. Artificial intelligence can control and optimize workflows through data analysis.Material orders and prefabrication can be controlled automatically. The BIM model can be updated automatically. The sky is the

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD SEPTEMBER 2018