Intelligent BIM-based spatial conflict simulators: A comparison with commercial 4D tools

In construction projects, the space required for executing each activity is unanimously recognized as a limited but renewable resource, like workers, equipment, and materials. Overloading a given resource space, as demonstrated by statistics, leads to efficiency losses and safety threats. Despite the valuable contributions provided by academics and the construction software industry, a definitive tool for managing and resolving spatial issues is not available yet. In fact, current approaches, generally based on geometric intersection tests between main workspaces in their initial static position, do not account for not-purely-geometric spatial issues (e.g., struck-by hazards, electrical hazards, etc.) and overestimate conflicts affected by unlikely surrounding conditions. In order to cover these gaps, a workspace management framework integrated into the preparation of the construction schedule is proposed and tested by developing a spatial conflict simulator (i.e., "Enhanced" approach). The simulator implemented using the serious gaming environment Unity3DTM was compared with Synchro Pro (i.e., "Benchmark" approach). Results show a better performance of the "Enhanced" approach, able to extend the range of detected spatial conflicts thanks to physics simulations, and filter unlikely spatial conflicts based on Bayesian inference's results.