Automated Project Performance Control

photoConstruction project management is complicated by the lack of effective tools for monitoring their progress in real time. Managers are frequently unaware of potentially negative budget and schedule impacts of activities underway on site until it is too late to take effective action to correct any undesirable trends. Automated Project Performance Control (APPC) research at the Technion explores the technical and managerial aspects of sophisticated realt-time monitoring technologies, with a view to using them to provide real-time reporting of project information. Assoc. Prof. Ronie Navon has initiated a series of projects dealing with monitoring laborers, earthworks equipment and materials on site. Dr. Sacks’ involvement began in researching and establishing the dependency of APPC systems on building project information models; together with Prof. Navon and Eytan Goldschmidt (a doctoral student), a prototype BPdM adaptation for labor monitoring was implemented and explored.

More recently, Dr. Sacks proposed direct monitoring of construction lifting equipment based in existing ‘black box’ data monitors and recorders, and exploiting the data to monitor the construction activities themselves in real-time. A Master’s student, Irina Brodetzky, is currently working to test the feasibility of such a system based on tower cranes. More information is available in the following publications…..

In a separate project, Esin Ergen (a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon), is exploring application of radio-frequency ID tages to monitoring precast conctrete construction, under the supervision of Asst. Prof. Burcu Akinci. Dr. Sacks is a co-advisor in this work.