A model for automated monitoring of road construction

Monitoring and control of earthmoving operations is gaining an increasing interest. Manual monitoring and control of earthmoving operations have not yielded the expected results. Additionally, because manual monitoring is labor-intensive, construction managers have to choose between monitoring based on rough estimates, or spending a lot of time collecting and processing data. The latter choice distracts them from many other important duties. The purpose of the present model is to automatically collect and process monitoring data providing the construction manager with real-time control information. The model was developed for road construction. It uses GPS technology for automated data collection, logging the locations of all the earthmoving equipment while working on the project. Specially developed algorithms convert these locations to control information regarding productivity, duration (or progress) and actual consumption of materials. The model was implemented and tested for 3 weeks in a road construction project. The performance of four activities was measured by the model and compared to manual measurement of the same parameters. This comparison indicated that the model could reach a deviation of ±5%.