ITcon Vol. 21, pg. 72-85, http://www.itcon.org/2016/5

Leveraging construction inspection and documentation for asset inventory and life cycle asset management

revised:April 2016
published:May 2016
editor(s):Amor R.
authors:Chenxi Yuan, Ph.D. student,
Division of Construction Engineering & Management, School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University
Email: yuan89@purdue.edu

Timothy McClure, Ph.D. student,
Division of Construction Engineering & Management, School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University
Email: tmcclur@purdue.edu

Phillip Dunston, Professor,
Division of Construction Engineering & Management, School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University
Email: dunston@purdue.edu

Hubo Cai, Associate Professor,
Division of Construction Engineering & Management, School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University
Email: hubocai@purdue.edu
summary:Accurate and complete construction records and as-built data are key prerequisites to the effective management of transportation infrastructure assets throughout their life cycle. The construction phase is the best time to collect such data. Assets such as underground drainage and culverts are visible and physically accessible only during construction. For assets such as guardrails, signals, and pavement, it is safer and more efficient to collect their data during the construction, before the road segment is open to traffic, than after construction. This paper presents a mobile application that is centered on construction inspection activities to leverage the construction inspection and documentation practice for asset inventory. Pay item is a specific unit of work with an estimated price, based on which a contractor is paid during construction. Therefore, the newly developed mobile application utilizes pay items as the bridge to match plan assets, i.e., physical structures prescribed in design documents, with corresponding assets in asset management database. Based on the match, an inspection activity-centered mechanism is created to facilitate the automatic conveyance of construction documentation data to asset management database. Implemented on a platform of mobile device, the application has been conceptually tested using an example asset - small culverts in a construction project of the Indiana Department of Transportation. It was validated that the newly proposed mobile application design scheme could leverage the existing construction inspection and documentation work to eliminate the individual data collection efforts for asset inventory purposes in current practice.
keywords:asset data collection, construction documentation, field inspection, pay items, asset inventory of transportation infrastructure
full text: (PDF file, 2.01 MB)
citation:Yuan C, McClure T, Dunston P, Cai H (2016). Leveraging construction inspection and documentation for asset inventory and life cycle asset management, ITcon Vol. 21, pg. 72-85, https://www.itcon.org/2016/5