A BIM Based Construction Site Layout Planning Framework Considering Actual Travel Paths

Construction site layout planning (CSLP) is recognized as a crucial component of construction management. The objective of CSLP is to determine the best arrangement of temporary facilities on a construction site, which would minimize the transportation distance of site personnel and equipment. It could be achieved by creating dynamic layout models that allow layout planners to cater the changing requirements of the site. However, these models are project specific and require large amount of manual data input by the layout planner. Besides being tedious, this approach is not practical either, since any changes to the design or construction plans would have to be manually updated into the models, resulting in unnecessary work by the layout planner. In this study, we propose an automated framework to create dynamic site layout models leveraging the BIM technology. Using the information in BIM models and construction schedules, a dynamic layout model can be automatically created for facility layout optimization. Furthermore, the actual travel distances among facilities instead of Euclidean distances are considered in our framework when performing the facility layout optimization. A* algorithm and genetic algorithm heuristic method are used. The proposed approach and framework could reflect the actual site situation and facilitate the facility layout planning on construction sites. A case example is presented in this paper to demonstrate the framework and compare its results with those using Euclidean distances