Construction Control Room for Project Monitoring and Control

The world is a dynamic and ever-changing environment leading decision makers to believe that from plan to execution, unforeseen conditions will undoubtedly occur. The military is known to face unforeseen obstacles while conducting the operations forcing leaders to plan deviations. The construction sector is not far from the military in terms of planning and executing under uncertainty. One common problem the sector faces is delay in completing tasks and, consequently, projects. To mitigate the effects of uncertainty during operations, the military uses control rooms in order to deal with the worst when it occurs. Military control rooms provide a comfortable and collaborative environment for teams to proactively anticipate, highlight and mitigate potential plan deviations and to resolve emerging problems and constraints fast and efficiently. This paper introduces the concept of military operation rooms to construction by proposing a technology-based Construction Control Room (CCR) where several commercially available technologies are integrated into one comprehensive and inclusive framework for monitoring and controlling ongoing construction activities. It is a collaborative space where all relevant design and construction entities are present. Site data and requests are received, monitored, and processed directly in the control room for proactive and corrective measures. Moreover, this paper presents the elements of a simulation-based tool which outputs the required number of personnel in the CCR. Real project data is obtained from a live project that one of the authors worked on in Western Europe. Data is used to build a discrete-event simulation model that mimics the workflow in the real system in order to analyze the flow of information within the room, suggest the optimum number of members that should be present in each entity, and monitor the resource utilization of each entity. The results of the model show the potential of using such control rooms for enhancing construction project delivery. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Budapest University of Technology and Economics & Diamond Congress Ltd Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2020.