I.A.A.R.C. - International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction Civil Engineering

Modularized construction with precast concrete elements has many advantages, such as shorter construction times, higher quality, flexibility, and lower costs. These advantages are mainly due to its potential for prefabrication and series production. However, the production processes are still craftsmanship, and automation rarely occurs. Fundamental to the automation of production is digitization. In recent years, the manufacturing industry made significant progress through the intelligent networking of components, machines, and processes in the introduction of Industry 4.0. A key concept of Industry 4.0 is the digital twin, which represents both components and machines, thus creating a dynamic network in which the participants can communicate with each other. So far, BIM and digital twins in construction have focused mainly on the structure as a whole and do not consider feedback loops from production at the component level. This paper proposes a framework for a digital twin for the industrialized production of precast concrete elements in series production based on the asset administration shell (AAS) from the context of Industry 4.0. For this purpose, relevant production processes are identified, and their information requirements are derived. Data models and corresponding AAS for precast concrete parts will be created for the identified processes. The functionalities of the presented digital twin are demonstrated using the use case of quality control for a precast concrete wall element. The result shows how data can be exchanged with the digital twin and used for decision-making.

Whereas building information modeling (BIM) and lean construction (LC) can be considered state-of-the-art practices in construction project design, planning, and control, internet of things (IoT) has yet a chance to connect processes in construction site monitoring applications and beyond. An opportunity might be that all of the aforementioned methods are hardly well enough integrated in a systematic way for purposes in knowledge-based decision making. A prominent example is that LC and associated simulation games in academic or professional education still rely much on manual data input and analysis. Proposed is a learning platform (a serious gaming environment) that teaches the concept of permanent availability of up-to-date actual performance data sets using an integrated BIM-IoT-LC approach. While the platform builds upon existing cloud-based BIM tools and well-known takt planning and takt control principles, a novel IoT platform was developed that rapidly elevates the gathering and transformation from data to information to knowledge while the participants play the game. The platform was tested in several academic learning environments around the world. Findings demonstrate the participants understand the important role of technology in practical applications. By extending their experiences from traditional LC simulation games with the BIM and IoT components, specifically, they were able to interact and collaborate more closely. Access to just-in-real-time project status information on smart wearable devices and large display screens helped improving the expected project execution timeline while reducing certain waste factors. One limitation that was discovered is the tight integration of the developed technology into new learning curricula that aim at digitalizing construction.