By Carlos T. Formoso, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre (Brazil) – formoso@ufrgs.br
Photo by Marcelo Moreira from Pexels
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a major threat to the health of millions of people and to the economic and social development around the world, especially in developing countries. In fact, the need for social distancing and, eventually, social isolation can have a great impact on a number of economic activities, generating unemployment. Although there is uncertainty about the evolution of the pandemic, there are predictions that intermittent social distancing may be necessary until 2022. The construction industry can potentially play an important role in helping economic recovery and generating jobs during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in developing countries. Construction sites are usually large spaces, which can allow the development of activities with an adequate degree of social distancing, as long as they are properly planned and controlled. However, many construction companies have limitations in both production and safety management, often resulting in low productivity, disorganized flows of people and materials, and high incidence of accidents, among other problems. This situation represents an obvious risk for the dissemination of COVID.
By contrast there are opportunities to integrate advanced Lean production management methods and resilience engineering principles, with the support of existing digital technologies. Lean Construction has advanced in many different countries with promising results, and many digital technologies have emerged and can potentially change the way construction has been managed, including Building Information Modelling (BIM), Wireless Transmission Technologies (WTT), mobile computing, among others.
Regarding resilience engineering, the need to cope with complexity has grown as the construction industry has been affected by growing sources of complexity, such as the increasing number of supply chain members, new technological alternatives involving off-site production, rising number of regulations, and innovative procurement approaches. Several studies have provided evidences that resilience engineering principles can be applied in construction projects to devise better planning and control systems that are able to reduce tradeoffs between efficiency and safety, improve the way safety performance is measured in construction, and define the necessary slack in production systems.
Considering this context, a network of researchers from four different universities, including the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, the Federal University of Bahia, The Federal University of Ceará, and Faculdade Meridional, have started a research project which aims to devise a model for the integrated management of safety and production in construction sites that combines resilience engineering, advanced lean production methods, and digital technologies.
Two specific planning and control methods will be explored: (i) the Last Planner System, a collaborative hierarchical planning tool that contributes to the reliability of production systems by protecting construction processes from variability, and (ii) location-based planning, which allows different crews to work in small batches, based on an explicit definition of workflows. Digital technologies will be used to keep the minimum distance between people in construction sites, as well as to provide virtual environments for collaboration and to extend the automation of production controls. Two main research deliverables are expected in this project: (i) an assessment of a sample of construction sites regarding the implementation of safety protocols to keep social distance and avoid the spread of COVID-19; and (ii) the refinement of a set of integrated planning and control methods, safety management protocols, and digital technologies, with the aim of achieving a high performance both in terms of efficiency and safety. This model will be tested in a small number of construction sites in three different states of Brazil.
Four types of technologies have been pre-selected to be used in this phase, due to their current stage of development and potencial contribution to advanced production management methods. These are: (i) wireless transmition technologies, including RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and Bluetooth; (ii) BIM (Building Information Modelling) for modelling products and processes; (iii) planning and control software that supports location-based planning, advanced lean techniques (e.g. andon, kanban), and positioning systems for tracking work flows; and (iv) mobile computing (tablets, mobile phones) to support social distancing. Differently from traditional research projects, the results of this investigation will be continuously disseminated to the construction industry, starting in the third month of the study. Several virtual means will be used, such as live presentations, webinars, and a project website.