ITcon Vol. 21, pg. 292-314, http://www.itcon.org/2016/19

Modeling of work envelope requirements in the piping and steel trades and the influence of global anthropomorphic characteristics

submitted:2016
revised:July 2016
published:October 2016
editor(s):Turk Ž
authors:Pierre Bannier, Graduate Student,
Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, The University of Colorado at Boulder;

Haifeng Jin, PhD Student, corresponding author
Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering, Dalian University of Technology;
email: Haifeng.Jin@colorado.edu

Paul. M. Goodrum, Professor,
Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, The University of Colorado at Boulder;
email: Paul.Goodrum@colorado.edu
summary:Limited and unavailable workspace for crews on the jobsite results in losses of productivity. With the increased usage of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the construction industry, four dimensional animation that brings together the three dimensional model of a building and its construction schedule to visualize construction process is emerging. To support space planning in the preconstruction management, this research provides a framework to integrate the knowledge of work envelope requirements among piping and steel trades. Typical work envelope requirements were defined through in-depth interviews with superintendents on U.S. industrial projects. Therefore, the rules and semantic information extracted from the interviews were summarized in seven decision trees, describing the geometric parameters relative to the body parts (e.g. chest and eye height). To compare the level of work envelope overlaps among global populations, anthropomorphic data was used to assess the absolute dimensions of the work envelopes. The results show that some work envelope requirements have a limited tolerance and are more sensitive to different body dimensions across global populations. It was found that in such situations the population anthropomorphic characteristics significantly impact the work envelope requirements. Therefore, this paper presents a decision supporting tool of work envelope requirements in compliment to space planning, which can improve the productivity, accuracy and efficiency of workspace management in the piping and steel trades.
keywords:work envelope, workspace management, productivity, anthropomorphic characteristics, BIM
full text: (PDF file, 1.441 MB)
citation:Bannier P, Jin H, Goodrum P M (2016). Modeling of work envelope requirements in the piping and steel trades and the influence of global anthropomorphic characteristics, ITcon Vol. 21, pg. 292-314, https://www.itcon.org/2016/19