A Concept for Automated Construction Progress Monitoring: Technologies Adoption for Benchmarking Project Performance Control

Abstract

Despite recent advances in technologies and equipment for automated progress monitoring, most construction companies worldwide do not utilize them for their projects. This can be due to many reasons, such as the high cost of technologies and equipment, need for skilled staff, and lack of sufficient information about the impact of automated progress monitoring on project performance control. The aim of the present research is to investigate the impact of automated progress monitoring on key project performance indicators: time, cost, and quality. This study prepared based on a survey of contracting and engineering consulting firms in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. In the first part of this study, structural equation modeling is used to identify the relations of different factors of project progress monitoring (both conventional and automated) with project performance control. In the second part of the study, a benefit analysis is evaluated based on the sixteen (16) journal and international conference papers and also twenty-four (24) international construction projects for which automated progress monitoring was employed. The research findings validate the positive impact of real-time, accurate, and cost-effective automated progress monitoring environments and reveal how automated progress monitoring affects construction project success.