ENHANCING CONSTRUCTION SAFETY MANAGEMENT: STRUCTURING AND INTEGRATION OF DATA THROUGH IFC

Federica Madaschi; Jacopo Cassandro; Claudio Mirarchi; Marco L. Trani

Abstract:

Estimating and managing construction site safety costs remains a critical issue within the construction sector's digital processes. Despite the adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM), safety-related cost items are still in natural language and commonly handled using spreadsheets and unstructured PDF documents, resulting in documents containing disjointed data and unrelated to the information model and temporary site elements. This research proposes an innovative methodology to structure and standardize safety cost data using the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema, enabling their integration into the digital model. Unlike prior work focused on general construction costs, this study applies IFC-based structuring specifically to safety-related costs, a rarely addressed domain. It develops a specific data architecture for safety elements, such as barriers, signage, scaffolding, and personal protective equipment, characterized by granular attributes and semantic relationships. The method was tested through a case study of an urban construction site using IFC-compliant models. The results highlight the feasibility and benefits of integrating safety costs into the BIM model, improving traceability, accuracy, and the potential for automation in managing safety costs. The study addresses a significant gap in current practices and paves the way for structured and interoperable management of safety costs and geometry data in construction and civil engineering projects.