Heritage buildings are subject to severe damage due to their exposure to dynamics such as environmental changes, earthquakes, structural loads, etc., thus needing a proper maintenance and management system. However, during the restoration, maintenance, and management process, heritage building practitioners face numerous challenges, such as inefficient project management, financial loss, and project delay. These problems arise due to a lack of digital documentation and updated information management systems. Heritage building management still uses traditional management techniques where heritage information is managed using multiple format systems by different professionals, thus missing collaboration, information integration, and interoperability. Building information modeling (BIM) is presented here as a supporting tool to address these issues. The aim of this study is to develop a novel HBIM framework to manage heritage buildings in an integrated and interoperable environment that supports 3D digital documentation to conserve a heritage building and facilitate restoration planning and facility management (FM) activities. Moreover, we demonstrate FM integration with BIM to promote this digital technique. The results indicate that the proposed framework is feasible and effective in providing information integration and communication between stakeholders in managing heritage buildings.

Underground utilities are important assets that provide basic services for society’s daily life. They are generally very complex and remain unnoticed until they fail due to any particular reason. The stakeholders involved in the design, construction, and maintenance of utility infrastructure face many problems due to the traditional underground utility management system, resulting in injuries, loss of life, disruptions, project delays, and financial loss. The problem with the traditional system is that it uses 2D drawings and keeps unreliable information or a lack of updated information, which makes it an inefficient utility management system. With the advancement in construction information technology, we can address this effectively by integrating BIM and GIS. In this paper, a novel integrated BIM-GIS framework for underground utility management systems was developed on the basis of IFC to CityGML mapping. It provides an effective underground utility management system that facilitates designers in optimization of the design, assists in the excavator’s operator by providing real-time three-dimensional spatial information during the construction process, and acts as an as-built information database for utility facility management. For validation, a real-time project case study indicated that the proposed system can effectively provide comprehensive underground utility information at different project stages.

Safety of construction projects may be affected by various factors such as types and scale of projects, construction methods, safety management procedure, climate, site conditions, etc. Among them is the quality of design in relation to safety. Presently, however, designers typically are not involved in construction safety. They are often uncertain of their responsibilities in relation to construction safety and fail to be responsible for avoiding or reducing safety-related risks. In this study, the concept of safety impact assessment to achieve “design-for-safety” in the design phase is introduced. For this purpose, a safety impact assessment model was devised, and a methodology using the risk-based safety impact assessment approach for open-cut type underground construction projects in Korea is suggested. The suggested methodology includes a safety information survey, classification of safety impact factors caused by design and construction, and quantitative estimation of magnitude and frequency of safe...

The rapid development in underground infrastructure is encouraging faster and more modern ways, such as TBM tunneling, to meet the needs of the world. However, tunneling activities generate complex and heterogeneous data, which makes it difficult to visualize the performance of a project. Advancements in information technology, such as digital twins and machine learning, provide platforms for digital demonstration, visualization, and system performance monitoring of such data. Therefore, this study proposes a digital twin-driven framework for TBM performance prediction through machine learning, visualization, and monitoring. This novel approach integrates machine learning and real-time performance data to predict, visualize, and monitor the status of the tunnel construction progress. A digital twin virtual model of TBM was constructed based on TBM design parameters, the input parameter, boring energy, RPM, torque, thrust force, speed, gripper pressure, total revolution, and Q-value provided to SVR and ANN models to predict the TBM AR and PR, and TBM daily progress was visualized continuously. The predictive performance indices R² (0.97) and RMSE (0.011) were estimated for AR prediction, showing the accuracy of the proposed model. To demonstrate the proposed framework, this study shows the its effectiveness. By implementing this framework, stakeholders can minimize the risk associated with the cost and schedule of a tunneling project by simultaneously visualizing and monitoring the performance of TBMs through digital twin and machine learning algorithms.

The increase in population and urbanization needs attention towards intense construction activities to meet the social and economic needs. Soil excavation is a primary step in every construction project that needs proper surface and subsurface information modeling since it is vulnerable to construction hazards. Geographic information system (GIS) provides significant information about the existing contextual surface information while building information modeling (BIM) gives information about the asset in a great detail that has been integrated into the construction industry for many applications. However, the integration of BIM and GIS for the subsurface geotechnical property modeling and classification into zones has been rarely explored. This paper presents the integration of BIM and GIS for modeling geotechnical properties and safe construction zones based on soil type. The use of open standard IFC classes such as IfcBorehole, IfcGeoslice, and IfcGeomodel enhances the collaboration and allows the exchange of geotechnical information among different stakeholders. The method has been applied to the in-situ and laboratory test dataset of the Peshawar, region, to validate the proof of concept. The results demonstrate that the proposed method successfully integrates BIM and GIS providing a three-dimensional surface and subsurface model. The 3D digital geotechnical model has excellent potential to provide information about soil type, properties, depth, and volume of each available soil layer that can be used by construction planners and managers to identify best construction practices and plan for safe construction.

Construction workers are frequently exposed to excessive physical demands due to repetitive lifting and material handling while performing tasks. Consequently, many construction workers suffer from a significant level of muscle fatigue that may negatively impact a project’s performance. Thus, evaluating the level of muscle fatigue prior to work and implementing appropriate interventions to reduce physical demands will help to prevent adverse effects of workers’ fatigue on construction operations. Even though several research efforts have suggested methodologies to evaluate muscle fatigue, the extent to which workers’ muscle fatigue would affect construction performance has not yet been fully studied. To address this issue, a simulation-based framework is proposed to estimate physical demands and corresponding muscle fatigue, and thus to quantitatively evaluate the impact of muscle fatigue during construction operations. Specifically, physical demands from a planned operation modeled using discrete...