Implication of a Construction Labour Tracking System for Measuring Labour Productivity

Implication of a Construction Labour Tracking System for Measuring Labour Productivity

Tracking systems are known as valuable approaches for monitoring vehicles and heavy equipment in infrastructure construction and mining sites. Tracking job-site equipment and monitoring the workforce during construction are critical for improving productivity. The current locating practices are based on real-time positioning sensors by alerting staff when entering specific areas within construction sites. However, this approach has not been fully used for measuring labour productivity, and there is much room for improvement. In addition, not much attention has been given to individuals’ two-way communication (e.g. among workers, site engineers and supervisors) in conjunction with tracking them in an interactive Geographic Information System (GIS) environment for productivity purposes and the daily performance evaluation. The aim of this chapter is to implement an online tracking system for indoor positioning using radio communication systems, called the Construction Labour Tracking System (CLTS), and integrate it with GIS. The CLTS is used for monitoring labour in the working area and processing the data for identifying heat maps of the crowded areas of a construction site at various time intervals. The CLTS process includes determination of the functionalities of the system components and the interrelationships between them and GIS. A series of field experimentations were carried out at a selected building. The results of this ongoing study show that CLTS has the capability to monitor the approximate position of workers in detail. The developed CLTS tool is highly valuable to construction project managers because it increases the quality of the collected data and enables them to measure labour productivity on construction sites