Automated Construction Progress Monitoring - Industry Perspective

The project schedule is an important control mechanism, yet the construction schedule monitoring practices are largely manual and document-centric. This leads to poor tracking of project progress, resulting in delays, cost overruns, bitter stakeholder relationships, schedule changes, and legislative proceedings to settle construction claims. Advancements in technology (such as Building Information Models, Cloud Computing, Sensors, Computer Vision, IoT, etc.) have shown the potential to automate construction progress monitoring (ACPM) with real-time data tracking and reporting for effective decision making in managing construction projects. However, applications of these technologies are largely experimental and have yet not been adopted in the construction industry. The objectives of this paper are to summarise the potential of available technologies for automated CPM (ACPM), examine the current industry needs, and present the industry perspective on adopting ACPM. This paper presents the findings of a survey that assessed the awareness of the construction industry (CI) professionals regarding the available technologies and techniques which enable and facilitate ACPM. The research limitations and future work directions are also discussed.