Visualizing high-rise building construction strategies using linear scheduling and 4D CAD

Project teams face ever increasing pressure to deliver projects as quickly as possible. To meet these demands, contractors are faced with the need to explore various construction strategies in order to meet delivery dates, and to assure themselves as to the achievability and quality of a schedule. Various visual representations of a project's schedule and associated information combined with visual representations of the project in progress, i.e. 4D CAD, can assist with these tasks of identifying effective construction strategies for shortening project duration, assessing their workability, and judging schedule quality. Such visual representations aid communication amongst project staff and facilitate brain-storming, and, implemented well they can provide clear, fast, and multi-dimensional feedback to the project team. In this paper, we describe aspects of our work which is directed at formulating a dynamic visualization environment that links 3D CAD, a generalization of traditional CPM which embraces linear scheduling, dual product representations (scheduling and CAD system) and their mapping onto each other, and schedule and CAD graphics in a manner which facilitates the relatively rapid exploration of alternative construction method and scheduling strategies for large scale linear projects (e.g. high-rise buildings, bridges, etc.). Requirements of such an environment include quickness, treating scale, working at multiple levels of detail, dealing with design variability, and realistic representation of the work. Use is made of a realistic example to highlight aspects of our approach and identify important issues that must be addressed if a visualization environment useful for construction professionals is to be developed.