Technology
High-tech Tools
Janaka Ruwanpura of the Schulich School of Engineering demonstrates the iBooth.
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inimizing mistakes, saving time and boosting the performance and safety of workers have never been more important. Construction projects are becoming more complex and the business climate more competitive, so there’s more pressure than ever to deliver projects on time and on budget. Project management experts are turning to wireless communication, remote sensing technologies and tracking devices for help. Engineers at the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering are developing high-tech tools including portable information kiosks and systems that use radio-frequency signals to keep tabs on workers, equipment and building materials. The iBooth is a wireless, mobile terminal that dispenses information about a project such as building plans, schedules, weather forecasts, even safety information. Managers can move the terminal onto any construction site and onto any floor of a building. The goal is to increase productivity by enabling instant access to vital information. The iBooth has been tested extensively by industry and in a few short years it could become a mainstream tool. “The construction industry lags behind others when it comes to adopting modern communication technology,” explains Janaka Ruwanpura, Canada research chair in project management systems and developer of the iBooth. “Ineffective communication is a major barrier to productivity and efficiency of major projects.” Ruwanpura and his research team are currently developing the second-generation iBooth and they hope to finish it early in 2012. Also in the testing phase is technology to monitor vital resources including equipment, building materials and workers themselves. Until now, this information was collected manually and it was time consuming, costly, and prone to human error. But radio-frequency signals com16
construction business
September/October 2011
bined with remote sensing technologies and realtime data reporting could change that. Civil engineering professor Farnaz Sadeghpour and graduate student Reza Maalek are exploring the feasibility and reliability of tracking objects and workers with tags that use ultra-wide band technology (UWB), which is part of the radio-frequency wave form spectrum. “Most accidents happen because of falls or people clashing with equipment. These are areas where we want to see improvements,” says Sadeghpour. “When a worker gets too close to equipment, or a worker or a piece of building material gets too close to an edge, an alarm will go off. It could be an alert on a mobile phone or an urgent announcement on the site. It could be in whatever format we choose.”
Ken Bendiktsen
By Jennifer Sowa
Two years ago, a three-year-old girl was killed in Calgary when a sheet of corrugated steel fell from an office tower that was under construction. A tracking system could help ensure batches of material are properly secured and kept a safe distance away from edges. It would also have advantages when it comes to taking inventory and preventing theft. If someone removed an item from a site without authorization, for example, the system would trigger an alarm. The research to develop such a system involves talking to people on job sites and monitoring them at work to study the strengths and weaknesses of different activities. Sadeghpour and her team take their hypotheses back to the tracking laboratory and integrate them into a computer model, then go back to the field to test them out. Tracking individual objects may sound expensive but Sadeghpour predicts it wouldn’t be as cost-prohibitive as many expect. “This technology is getting less and less expensive all the time. And you need to be selective about what you track. You don’t want to track every single item on a construction site. You don’t need to follow every nut and bolt, just the things that are really important and valuable.” Besides, given the devastation caused by injuries and deaths and the high cost of construction delays, the expense of a tracking system would be nothing in comparison. Jennifer Sowa works in media relations at the Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary. Researchers graduate student Reza Maalek, left and civil engineering professor Farnaz Sadeghpour with tracking tags on hard hats.