Weather-wise: working with the weather to improve construction productivity

不可预见的影响，而不仅仅是极端的，天气条件对Costain的建筑生产力产生了不利影响，导致他们严重的项目延误和经济损失。Costain的智能高速公路项目与大多数基础设施项目一样，主要在户外进行，涉及多种对天气敏感的活动。然而，不同的活动往往容易受到天气变量和/或强度的不同组合的影响。目前，英国政府承诺到2021年投资超过3000亿英镑用于升级基础设施系统。延迟交付项目可能在国家一级产生重大经济影响。这是因为在大量投资的时期错过了对这一新基础设施的及时利用，可能会损害该国的经济增长和包括政府在内的多方利益相关者的金融稳定。该项目的目的是从建筑相关的角度应对利用天气季节平均变化的挑战。我们的目标是开发一个整体和定量的运筹学调度工具，预计可能发生的特定组合的天气事件，防止令人满意的执行频繁的施工作业。不是极端天气事件，只是连续的现象和/或组合的非极端天气事件，这些事件影响了大多数承包商95%以上的日常运营。特别是，该工具将实施调查人员提出的最新随机运营研究（SOR）模型，这将允许Costain优化项目和活动的开始日期，执行顺序，甚至在可能的情况下在英国各地交替位置。所有这些都是为了缩短正在进行的和未来的项目工期和/或降低成本。此外，该项目将使其他建筑利益相关者，如公共和私人项目业主受益。这些都将受益于基础设施项目的按时投入使用，并采用更高效和更能感知天气的维护方法，同时大幅减少频繁的天气相关索赔金额。关于可交付成果和产出，项目的第一阶段将包括扩展调查人员的SOR模型，以包括智能高速公路频繁的施工活动。第二阶段将涉及开发一个计算机应用程序，该程序可以创建项目时间表，将前一项活动与它们敏感的天气变量的特定（预定义和可定制）组合联系起来。这个计算机应用程序将执行一组最近的调查人员的正弦波回归表达式，将历史天气事件的概率与地理坐标和一年中可以进行施工活动的日期联系起来。第三阶段将涉及应用程序提交初始项目时间表到多个人工生成的年份，这些年份的天气将共同类似于该地区的气候。在每一年中，该软件将计算每个项目活动因恶劣天气而遭受的延误。最后，计算机应用程序将估计总体最短项目总工期以及最佳活动顺序和开始日期。之前在建筑施工中使用当前SOR模型的实验表明，在建筑项目的早期阶段实施该模型可以缩短项目工期至少10%（平均），按比例降低间接和管理费用，并最终提高生产率。预计未来承包商的基础设施项目将有类似或更高的数字。12个月总成本（80%FEC）：£ 131，430.90关键词：天气明智，施工，调度，优化，Costain，智能高速公路

The influence of unforeseen, and not just necessarily extreme, weather conditions have adversely impacted Costain's construction productivity causing them significant project delays and economic losses. Costain's smart motorway projects, like most infrastructure projects, are predominantly carried out outdoors and involve multiple weather-sensitive activities. However, different activities are often susceptible to different combinations of weather variables and/or intensities. This has made the analysis of interaction between weather and construction productivity quite challenging so far.Nowadays, the UK government is committed to investing over £300 billion on an upgraded infrastructure system by 2021. Late projects delivery may have a significant economic impact at the country level. This, as missing the timely exploitation of this new infrastructure during a period of heavy investments can harm the country's economic growth and the financial stability of multiple stakeholders, including the government.The aim of this project is to tackle the challenge of harnessing the weather seasonal average variation from a construction-relevant perspective. The objective is to develop a holistic and quantitative Operational Research scheduling tool that anticipates the likely occurrence of specific combinations of weather events that prevent the satisfactory execution of frequent construction operations. Not extreme weather events, just sequential phenomena and/or combined non-extreme weather events, which condition over 95% of most contractors' daily operations.Particularly, the tool will implement a recent Stochastic Operational Research (SOR) model proposed by the investigators, which will allow Costain to optimise the project and activities start dates, their order of execution, even alternate locations across the UK when possible. All these with the aim of shortening the ongoing and future project durations and/or reduce their costs.Additionally, this project will benefit other construction stakeholders such as public and private project owners. These will benefit from infrastructure projects put in service on time, with more efficient and weather-aware maintenance approaches, while significantly reducing the amount of the frequent weather-related claims.Regarding deliverables and outputs, the first stage of the project will consist of extending the investigators' SOR model to include smart motorway frequent construction activities. The second stage will involve developing a computer application that can create project schedules linking the former activities to specific (predefined and customisable) combinations of weather variables they are sensitive to. This computer application will implement a set of recent investigators' sine wave regression expressions linking historical weather events probability with the geographical coordinates and day of the year when construction activities can be performed. The third stage will involve the application submitting the initial project schedule to multiple artificially-generated years whose weather will collectively resemble the climatology of the region. In each of those years, the software will calculate the delays each project activity will suffer because of adverse weather. Finally, the computer application will estimate the overall shortest project total duration and the optimum activities order and start dates.Previous experiments with the current SOR model in building construction have shown that implementing this model at an early stage of a construction project can shorten the project duration by at least 10% (on average), reduce the indirect and overhead costs proportionally and ultimately improve productivity rates. Similar or higher figures are expected for future contractors' infrastructure projects.Expected dur.: 12 months. Total cost (at 80%FEC): £131,430.90Keywords: Weather-wise, construction, scheduling, optimisation, Costain, smart motorways