RFID-facilitated construction materials management (RFID-CMM) – A case study of water-supply project

Abstract

Due to the complex and dynamic nature of the construction industry, construction materials management faces many unique challenges from material planning, ordering, receiving and storing, handling and distribution, site usage and monitoring. Poor materials management has been identified as a major source of low construction productivity, cost overrun and delays. Lack of active, accurate and integrated information flow from material planning, inventory, site use to monitoring and control is a major contributor to such problems. However, it is difficult to obtain such accurate information actively due to the nature of the industry, particularly for large or material intensive projects such as oil or water pipe-laying projects. This paper presents a Radio Frequency Identification system (RFID) facilitated construction material management system which is developed to tackle this problem. This latest technology helps project teams to collect material storage and usage information in an active and accurate way. Additionally, it facilitates the flow of information through the construction materials management process focusing on dynamic material planning, ordering and monitoring. The developed system is being implemented in a water-supply project.

Introduction

In recent years, automatic identification has become popular in services, purchasing and distribution logistics, manufacturing and material flow systems [18], which facilitate the management of information about people, animals, goods and products in transit. The traditional barcode labels have been found inadequate in many cases (e.g. low storage capacity and cannot be reprogrammed). The technically optimal solution would be the storage of data in a silicon chip (e.g. the smart card based upon a contact field). However, the physical contact used in the smart card is often impractical. A contactless transfer of data between the data-carrying device and its reader is far more flexible. The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology provides solutions to such problems [13].

RFID offers wireless communication between the tags and readers with non-line-of-sight readability, which eliminates manual data collection and introduces the potential for automated identification process. The technology offers some unique advantages over the traditional barcode or smart card such as the flexible contactless identification range, multiple products identification, expressive read reliability and durability, massive data storage, and high level of data security [31], [18]. RFID technology is becoming popular in the areas of public transport [43], ticketing [18], security [40], children caring [34], and purchasing and distribution logistics [8].

Given its unique advantages, several research initiatives have been developed to adopt RFID in the construction industry such as material and asset tracking system [42], [7], [45], [11], tools and equipment tracking system [21], security, service and maintenance [26], [27], supply chain management [47], health and safety [4], facility management [15], [16], [38] and quality control [48]. RFID has been proven as a promising technology for enhancing construction operations [37]. Some of the major benefits include increased productivity, reduced costs, time saving, reduced errors, proper control of assets/stock, increased security, and improved project and process management [9]. However, many of the applications in construction over-exaggerate the strength of the technology while ignoring the nature and specific problems of the industry [12]. There is a lack of integration between the technology and the management systems [39].

Materials management includes the process of planning, inventory control, receiving and storing, material handling, physical distribution, and relevant information from the point of origin to point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements. It has been estimated that a 2% saving in materials costs could increase profits by 14.6% [6]. On the other hand, inappropriate materials management and the consequent problems (e.g. shortage of important materials, inaccessibility of items, excessive time to obtain these items, or ideal time) are a main cause of low productivity, cost overruns, and delay in construction [3], [25], [2], [35]. Material loss resulting from direct and indirect wastes was 3.6–11% in housing projects [14]. In the UK, at least 10% of all raw materials delivered to most sites are wasted through damage, loss, and over-ordering [22]. Things have not improved much in recent years [41].

A major difficulty of construction materials management (CMM) includes [39]:

• the large amount of materials used,

• many parties and issues involved internally and externally,

• passive rather than proactive,

• complex and dynamic process of material planning, ordering, site monitoring and re-planning, and

• a lack of integrated material information flow facilitated by the active material planning and monitoring system.

This paper presents the research work conducted for the improvement of the CMM by introducing RFID technology into the CMM process. It aims to tackle the dynamic process of material planning, ordering, inventory control, site utilization and monitoring by adopting RFID technology in order to actively monitor the material planning and usage and the relevant information flow. Unlike previous studies, this research emphasizes on how a system is developed to overcome the broken information flow problems of CMM by using the technology as a lever. The focus is on the improvement of the CMM system. The developed RFID-facilitated construction materials management (RFID-CMM) system has been tested in a water-supply project which used to suffer from poor materials management due to the complex operation environment.