Smart Construction | Exploring Practical Pathways for Smart Construction to Open a New Chapter in Industrial Development

The following article is sourced from China Construction Informatization, author: Luo Doudou

Beijing is exploring and forming an effective, replicable model of experience in the field of smart construction. A batch of smart construction benchmark projects have applied a series of innovative technologies during construction, providing concrete practical pathways for the on-the-ground application of smart construction.

To better advance the construction of Beijing as a smart construction pilot city, over the past year Beijing has successively issued a number of implementation plans to promote the application and development of smart construction.

In March 2023, the Work Plan for Beijing as a Smart Construction Pilot City, formulated by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, proposed that by the end of 2025 an implementation plan for promoting the coordinated development of smart construction and new-type building industrialization in Beijing would be researched and formulated; that breakthrough progress would be made in research on key smart construction technologies; that enterprises' technological innovation capabilities would be greatly enhanced; that high-level smart construction talent would be concentrated; that the policy, industrial, and standard systems for smart construction development would take initial shape; that industrial cluster advantages would be evident; and that the digital transformation of construction enterprises would be gradually realized. In addition, it put forward eight key tasks, including improving the policy system, cultivating the smart construction industry, building pilot demonstration projects, and innovating management mechanisms.    

In June of the same year, the Implementation Plan for Promoting the Coordinated Development of Smart Construction and New-Type Building Industrialization in Beijing, jointly formulated by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and 12 other departments, put forward 8 key tasks, including accelerating the development of new-type building industrialization, strengthening technological innovation and the transformation of achievements, accelerating the integrated application of new-generation information technology, cultivating the industrial system, continuously promoting green construction, accelerating the construction of digital home engineering facilities, accelerating the cultivation of professional talent, and innovating industry supervision and service models.

Beijing is exploring and forming an effective, replicable model of experience in the field of smart construction, creating new momentum for driving the high-quality development of the industry. At the same time, a batch of smart construction benchmark projects have applied a series of smart construction innovations during construction, providing concrete practical pathways for the on-the-ground application of smart construction.

Take the Beijing Anzhen Hospital Tongzhou Campus smart construction project as an example. Located west of Xiaobao Village, Songzhuang Town, Tongzhou, the project has a total floor area of 340,000 square meters, with a two-level basement overall and up to 10 floors above ground. Once completed, the project will provide patients with integrated prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation medical services covering the entire course of disease.

The project applies the BIM+ Smart Construction Site Data Decision-Making System Integration Platform to manage in an integrated way the project progress, cost, quality, safety, technology, and other data carried by BIM, together with the monitoring data of the six major production factors—“people, machines, materials, methods, environment, and measurement”—generated by smart terminals. By comprehensively leveraging core technologies such as IoT, BIM, big data, and AI, it collects and aggregates all kinds of data from the construction site in real time, effectively supporting the project in precise analysis, intelligent decision-making, and scientific management. It has formed a data-driven new smart construction site management model, realizing comprehensive digitalization of the physical building, production factors, and management processes, and achieving the goals of improved production efficiency, orderly management, cost savings, and controllable risks.    

By installing a smart materials system, the weights of vehicles entering and leaving the site are calculated automatically and the data is sent back to the materials management system, which compares the actual weight against the waybill weight for materials weighed on site. After aggregating the various data, it also produces a supply deviation analysis for each supplier, providing an effective basis for settlement. This not only improves the efficiency of materials acceptance but also saves costs for the project.

A labor management system is used to implement real-name management of on-site personnel. Based on turnstiles and facial recognition devices, it enables rapid personnel entry, closed control of multiple gate areas, and automatic attendance recording. All labor data is integrated into the platform to form a labor database, allowing managers to grasp employment conditions in real time, standardize labor employment management, move risk control checkpoints forward, and cover the entire labor management process, greatly improving the efficiency and quality of on-site labor management.

Through the safety management system, hazard investigation, risk identification, hot work operations, and the like are managed online. Safety managers can initiate rectification of relevant hazards from their mobile phones, view rectification progress at any time, and carry out hazard re-inspection immediately, gaining a precise and efficient grasp of subcontractor safety management.

Through the tower crane safety monitoring system, operating data such as the radius, height, weight, and tilt angle of on-site tower cranes can be displayed digitally. Once unsafe behavior occurs during tower crane operation, real-time warnings can be issued, and operating records and alarm information are uploaded to the platform in real time, facilitating remote supervision and information retention. By automatically analyzing tower crane operating records, the system helps managers judge crane operators' work intensity and equipment maintenance deadlines, ensuring that tower cranes always remain in a safe operating condition and fundamentally preventing tower crane safety accidents. Based on backend cloud platform statistics, data analysis is carried out on quality hazards, including the number of unrectified quality hazards, analysis of unresolved hazards by responsible person, analysis of unresolved hazards by subcontractor, and quality hazard trend analysis, providing multi-dimensional data analysis by subcontractor, rectification personnel, hazard type, and more to support decision-making.    

As a key project of Beijing Municipality, this project began applying smart management methods from the early stage of project planning, carrying out smart management of labor personnel, construction quality, construction safety, and construction progress. This won high recognition and active participation from all parties involved in construction, creating a good smart construction application effect. By fully leveraging the BIM+ Smart Construction Site Data Decision-Making System Integration Platform, the project used technologies such as IoT, artificial intelligence, and big data to digitally replace or assist the specific work of each business line, thereby accumulating a vast amount of production operation data. Through systematic integration and intelligent analysis by the platform, visualized data charts are presented, greatly improving the project's construction efficiency, quality, and safety levels, reducing overall construction costs, and supporting project managers in making scientific and reasonable decisions. This provided advanced and reliable technical support for the smart construction of the project. It not only enhanced the project's quality and image but also set a benchmark demonstration, delivering positive and far-reaching social benefits.

(Author: Editorial Department. The full text was published in China Construction Informatization.)

          

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