Construction sites are very dynamic with various contractors challenging for the space in which to work and the plant needed to undertake the work.
A construction site is no different to an office or a hospital in that there is physical space within which different groups undertake various activities; indeed the space planning or management task challenge is even more challenging in that the window of time for planning is far tighter than that available in a conventional building.

Although some of the more thorough planners may break the site down into zones, the sequence of activities, and the preparatory work or temporary work required to support an activity, would be planned far more effectively if it were done in direct relationship with the plan of the site and individual plans from each supplier as to the access they will need and when.

The plan of an entire site is taken into ActivePlan and a number of intelligent zones created that what they are, where they are and what they contain. As items are moved into zones, either visually on the site plan or textually in the database, each intelligent area knows what occupies its space; plant, materials, work activities. Building elements that are associated (perhaps as part of one system or cluster) can be selected and grouped (even if they are not physically connected). The planner may use MS Project or Primavera to determine a sequence of activities, thereby providing the planned start and completion date for each piece of equipment or work activity that updates the ActivePlan database, allowing the sequence of work to be clearly visualised in a 4D model – perhaps turning red to indicate perceived danger.

Health & safety also has a important role here since research has shown that the incidence of accidents increases in areas where work has become congested, so the allocation of safe working areas, and the means to remodel those should a delay impact on when a planned work package can start, will naturally create a safer working environment.

Plant hire is a major cost and one which contractors are keen to monitor. Main contractors may hire an item and then allow subcontractors to use it, at a cost, for their packages. As in a hospital, items of equipment and plant can have an intelligent tag that can track them either coming on or off the site, where they should be and who should be using them. This allows the main contractor to plan and administer the use of plant and easily manage the recharging process. This should result in less plant being required through improved planning, better utilisation of plant when it is in place, easier administration on site and improved management reporting to understand what plant could come off hire and when and contribution to a knowledge base with analysis of what plant was actually used and needed to inform future plant procurement decisions.

It may be the case that analysis indicates that access to certain (perhaps more expensive) types of plant had a significant effect of productively and could be built into a value-added offer to future clients.
How to pay for work completed is now being widely questioned and ActivePlan’s ability to make logical associations between physical items can help with this. An electrical contractor may be unhappy to wait until the whole of a service is completed, through 1st fix and 2nd fix, so the cost manager could use ActivePlan to identify what he considers to be a reasonable group of work that justifies payment giving the contractor, and the rest of the team, a clear understanding of what is expected. If another activity looks as though it may interfere with this, it can be clearly identified and, at best, avoided or at worst, removing the basis of a dispute.

ActivePlan can also be used to track the delivery and storage of materials, allowing planners to plan the space needed and also the most appropriate location to drop them to support individual packages of work. Time-evented models allow the construction team to identify what materials will be needed by whom and when, what routes they will take to carry them to the point of fixing and any issues delays in other work packages may have.

Time-evented (or 4D) modelling has not been widely implemented, largely because it requires each activity to related to an object in a CAD model, a level of modelling nor normally undertaken. ActivePlan’s ability to hold multiple logical relationships against any object means that a 2D CAD layout for an internal wall can be translated into ActivePlan’s database and a number of activities – build, 1st electrical, drylining, plaster finishing, 2nd fix electrical, decoration and electrical finish are all related to the same object in ActivePlan. This means time-evented modelling can be undertaken using conventional 2D construction drawings without producing special 3D models.