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

不可预见的天气条件的影响，而不仅仅是极端的天气条件，对Costein的建筑生产率产生了不利影响，导致他们严重的项目延误和经济损失。科斯坦的智能高速公路项目，就像大多数基础设施项目一样，主要在户外进行，涉及多种天气敏感活动。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。到目前为止，这使得天气和建筑生产率之间的相互作用的分析非常具有挑战性。目前，英国政府承诺在2021年之前投资超过3000亿GB来升级基础设施系统。延迟交付项目可能会在国家一级产生重大的经济影响。这一点，因为在大规模投资期间错过了对这些新基础设施的及时开发，可能会损害国家的经济增长和包括政府在内的多个利益攸关方的金融稳定。该项目的目的是从与建筑相关的角度解决利用天气季节性平均变化的挑战。目标是开发一种全面和定量的业务研究调度工具，以预测可能发生的特定天气事件组合，从而阻止频繁施工作业的令人满意的执行。不是极端天气事件，而是连续现象和/或组合的非极端天气事件，超过95%的承包商的日常运营。特别是，该工具将实现调查人员最近提出的随机运营研究(SOR)模型，该模型将允许Costein优化项目和活动的开始日期，它们的执行顺序，甚至在可能的情况下英国各地的替代地点。所有这些都是为了缩短正在进行的和未来的项目工期和/或降低其成本。此外，这项项目还将使其他建筑利益相关者，如公共和私人项目业主受益。这些将受益于按时投入使用的基础设施项目，采用更高效和更具天气意识的维护方法，同时显著减少与天气有关的频繁索赔。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建设活动。第二阶段将涉及开发一个计算机应用程序，该应用程序可以创建项目时间表，将以前的活动与它们敏感的特定(预定义的和可定制的)天气变量组合联系起来。这一计算机应用程序将实现一组最近调查人员的正弦波回归表达式，将历史天气事件概率与可以进行施工活动的地理坐标和日期联系起来。第三阶段的申请将涉及提交多个人工生成年份的初始项目时间表，这些年份的天气总体上与该地区的气候相似。在这些年中的每一年，该软件都会计算出每个项目活动因不利天气而受到的延误。目前的SOR模型在建筑施工中的前期实验表明，在建设项目的早期阶段实施该模型，平均可以缩短项目工期至少10%，按比例减少间接成本和间接成本，最终提高生产率。预计未来承包商的基础设施项目将出现类似或更高的数字。总成本(80%FEC)：GB 131,430.90关键词：天气、施工、调度、优化、成本控制、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