CONSITEPLAN – A Multi-Objective Construction Site Utilization Planning Tool

Abstract

Construction Site Utilization Planning (CSUP) involves identifying, sizing, and positioning the temporary construction facilities required during different stages of the project within the available site boundaries and using available offsite facilities. CSUP has a significant positive impact on worker productivity, costs, and duration of construction. An effectively planned layout could potentially result in improvements in quality of work and safety of operations. This research work presents a temporary facility layout planning tool aimed at building on existing research on site layout planning. A user friendly, mathematically robust optimization tool that enables the user to model geometric, temporal and project specific requirements is presented in this thesis. This tool uses an optimization engine based on genetic algorithms. The tool provides an option to conventional distance measurement formulas (i.e., Euclidean and Manhattan). The tool is designed to enable the user to specify project specific constraints such as unusable areas, use of offsite locations for temporary facilities, eliminating double handling of materials by locating the required temporary facilities (e.g., laydown areas) within the reach of a user defined crane location. The tool also has the capability to use data extracted from REVIT Building Information Modeling (BIM) models. This tool is designed to be user friendly, mathematically robust and practical.