Automated Laydown Area Configurator: Rapid Generation & Evaluation of Laydown Area Plan Design Options to facilitate decision making

Abstract

Construction site utilization planning esp. laydown area has implications for project safety, construction efficiency, scheduling, and budgetary performance of a project. An important aspect not identified in past research efforts are the current practices for
laydown area plan development currently used by the construction industry.

Therefore, the objectives of this research were 1) to determine the best practices for laydown area planning; 2) to develop a procedure that outlines the laydown area planning process; and 3) to explore how current Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology can be harnessed for site utilization plan development.

The current research hypothesizes a system that can computationally generate vast numbers of design options, respect project constraints, analyze for laydown area hygiene goals and assist the project team and procurement coordinator make better decisions thus reducing overhead costs and time routinely associated with manually planning this process. It also discussed the design and development of a parametric tool built from insights into space planning from architects and computational design, coupled with algorithms for evolutionary systems and computational geometry, to develop an automated computational framework that enables the rapid generation and analysis of space plan layouts.