Navigational models for effective and efficient interaction with integrated product and process models on construction sites

In recent years, emerging mobile computing devices have become usable on construction sites and provide a medium to make project management information available directly at the work face of a construction site. Moreover, such devices support data collection for project management tasks and eliminate post-processing of information gathered on a construction site with paper-based solutions. Navigational models serve as a vehicle to provide usable representations of project management information that is contained in integrated product and process models. These representations are flexible with respect to the level of detail and the type of the representation (list, 2D or 3D representation). Moreover, navigational models allow customization of what information of a large product and process model is made available to the user, and therefore reduce the size and the complexity of the representations with which a user has to interact on a construction site. The navigational model approach has been implemented in the prototype software Site Data Collection System (SiDaCoS) and has been validated for the project management tasks of progress monitoring and the creation and administration of punch lists. The approach is general and may potentially also support other project management tasks, such as cost control and document management. In the validation of the system, it was shown that data access and data collection tasks on construction sites can be performed with SiDaCoS effectively and more efficiently than with systems that do not implement navigational models. In all considered test cases, SiDaCoS could provide the needed representations that allowed efficient interaction with project management data. The system can therefore make mobile computing devices useful tools for project management tasks and eliminate cumbersome and error prone paper-based data access and data collection solutions on construction sites. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)