Research on RFID Applications in Construction Industry

Hossam Morsy

Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt Email: Eng_Hossam_Morsy@Hotmail.com

Abstract Among the array of innovative ICTs (information and communication technologies), radio frequency identification technology (RFID) can be considered as a major innovation with the potential to offer many new opportunities for construction companies to improve communication, facilitate teamwork, improve information management skills, and encourage greater cross-fertilization between business processes , Generally, emerging technologies such as wireless system, bar-coding and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) are not being adequately used to overcome human error and are not well integrated with project management systems to make the tracking and management of materials easier and faster. Finally, applications examples in construction industry are presented for highlighting its enabling employment, it is hoped that this paper will give a useful implications for RFID researchers and practitioners and provide a roadmap to guide future research.

Introduction

Construction industry plays a major role in development and achievement the goals of the society. Construction is one of the largest industries and contributes to about 10% of the gross national product (GNP) in industrialized countries (Navon, 2005). Construction industry has complexity in its nature because it contains large number of parties such as clients, contractors, consultants, stakeholders and regulators. Construction industry has dynamic and uncontrolled environments, where tracking components/materials and tools, and accessing related information are challenging tasks. Current approaches for managing components/materials and tools mostly use labor-intensive methods to collect and record related tracking information. Data collected using manual methods are not reliable or complete because they are dependent on the motivation and skills of the people (typically workers) who are tasked for data collection (Liu, 1995), Moreover, data collected through these methods are usually transferred and stored in paper-based format, which is difficult to search and access, In addition, information integration and sharing are generally more complex among construction industry players than in other industries (Betts et al., 1991). The construction industry’s key organizational entities look for more effective and efficient ICTs (information and communication technologies) (Adriaanse, 2010). This data collection process is critical to any improvement in the future. However, collecting field data has been a challenging proposition because of the complexity of construction sites and the interdependencies among resources.

Using the technologies to enhance the automation of an on-site data collection process can help eliminate duplicate data entry, reduce paperwork, automatically generate reports and speed delivery of electronic data for communication (Navarrete 1999; Cox et al. 2002). Among the array of innovative ICTs, radio frequency identification technology (RFID) can be considered as a major innovation with the potential to offer many new opportunities for construction companies to improve communication, facilitate teamwork, improve information management skills, and encourage greater cross-fertilization between business processes (Peansupap et al., 2005; Bowden et al., 2005). This paper is a report of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and it provides an overview of possible applications for using RFID in construction industry and describes the functional requirements for RFID to be used in construction domain. History of RFID RFID is not a new technology for other industries such as defence, security, transportation, supply chain management,..…..etc The first application of RFID technology can be traced back to World War II (1940), IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) system used the active tags to distinguish hostile aircraft and friendly aircraft (Henrici 2008). An early reference to the ideas behind RFID technology is the landmark paper “Communication by Means of Reflected Power” by Harry Stockman that was published in 1948. This paper was published just after the research into radar and radio that was conducted during the Second World War. As RFID is a combination of radio broadcast technology and radar this development is not surprising (Landt, 2001). In the 1970s there was active work on RFID by academics, companies, and governments (Landt, 2001). Throughout the 1980s the reach of RFID technology extended. In the United States there was great interest in applying RFID technology in transportation. The 1990s was the significant decade for the widespread adoption of RFID technology (Landt, 2001). IBM developed an ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID system in the1990s. This system presented longer read range (up to 20 feet) and faster data reading capacity. In late1990s the cost of installing RFID was high and didn’t match the economic limitations of industry ("History of RFID Technology" 2005). Since 2001 RFID technology has been widely applied in various areas such as transportation, security, access control, agriculture, construction, retailing, food, medical, tourism, and athletics (Schneider2003). RFID Technology RFID is positioned as “an emergent technology for real-time tracking of any product, module, system and eventually any component as they move along the various layers of supply chains” Bendavid (2008, p. ix) and one of today’s “fastest growing technologies in terms of scope of application in the next generation of business intelligence” (Chen, Tsai, and Liu, 2008). Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a term that is extensively used to describe a system that transmits the identity (in the form of a unique serial number) of an object or person wirelessly, using radio waves (Goodrum and McLaren 2003).

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RFID Reading Range The reading range of RFID differs with the specification of the system such as the frequency of the tags, and it also depends on whether the tag is active or passive. The less expensive passive RFID tags have a reading range of only one foot. However, a typical passive tag can transmit information up to six feet. Active tags can have a range of over sixty feet. The active tags have a larger reading range than the passive tags, because they are internally powered and do not rely on the electromagnetic field to be activated. The reading range may vary slightly due to different conditions and the environment. Reading through different materials may lessen the reading range due to interference. Also, the weather may affect the reading range. Steel structures can significantly decrease the reading range of either active or passive tags (Goodrum and McLaren, 2003). Over view of Construction Industry and The Need for RFID The construction industry has characteristics that separately are shared by other industries but in combination appear in construction alone (Hillebrandt, 1984). It has been known that it is challenging to track materials/components, tools and labors and related information since environments are mostly dynamic, uncontrolled and subjected to harsh conditions. An example of such an environment is a construction site, Construction sites are very dynamic since materials, which might arrive on a daily basis, are staged at various laydown areas and their locations can be changed several times before they are installed in their final locations within a facility. Unlike factories, construction sites have uncontrolled environments, where pieces of equipment do not follow pre-determined paths when moving or do not operate in a pre-determined way, In addition, since production is performed in open air, harsh conditions are observed such as rain and dust, within such dynamic and harsh environments, it is obvious that current manual and paper-based way of tracking resources and components are ineffective and inefficient and there is a need for an automated resource tracking system that will function well in dynamic and harsh environments observed in construction industry. Another challenging characteristic of construction industry is that there are many unique materials/components that need to be uniquely tracked and that require unique handling and Installation techniques, workers that are handling those materials/components at site currently search for paper-based documents related to each component to get the instructions for handling and installation, these results in time-consuming searches to identify the related information, thus, there is a need to have component related information to be easily accessible and readily available at construction sites. Most of these technologies such as bar codes require line-of-sight to capture identification information, and require a labor intensive scanning activity to be performed on each object. Labor-intensive approaches rely on workers' judgment and skill for data collection (Liu, 1995). Since construction workers consider data collection to be a secondary task and try to avoid it (Flanagan, 1996), these approaches result in incomplete and inaccurate data, as a result, systems utilizing such approaches typically have reliability issues on the information they provide. In addition, some of the technologies used cannot survive in harsh conditions encountered in open-air production and construction environments.

RFID technology does not require line-of-sight for data collection, and some types have long read ranges and large data storage capacities, also, RFID tags can be encapsulated for protection in harsh construction conditions. All of these characteristics of RFID technology make it an attractive technology that has potential to address the challenges associated with tracking resources on construction sites. Recently several studies in construction industry proposed utilization of RFID technology for resource and related information tracking. The next section provides an overview of possible applications for using RFID in construction industry. Applications of RFID in Construction Industry In recent years, RFID technology has been successful applied in construction industry. Application examples in different knowledge areas from both research and practice of construction industry are as follows. 1-Construction waste Management Construction and demolition (C&D) waste is defined as the waste that arises from construction, renovation and demolition activities (Shen et al., 2004; Poon et al., 2004). During the past decades, construction and demolition (C&D) waste issues have received increasing attention around the world. The biggest environmental challenge facing the construction waste management is the implementation of 3R (Recycling, Reuse and Reduction) strategy. Cheng and ma present a RFID-based approach to facilitate the waste management, in which RFID tags can be attached to the waste items which will be respectively treated according to their different types. For example, metal waste can be recycled, waste concrete can be used for producing new concrete, and hazardous waste can be treated with special methods. By using RFID-tags, contractors can easily locate those tagged materials, get them together according to the type of wastes and upload the information of those waste items to the internet. Then the recycling companies can get the information available online to select the waste items that they are interested in. In Hong Kong, for example, a “trip ticket system” is implemented to prevent illegal dumping. The trip ticket system is a recording system for trucks transporting waste, ensuring that each type of waste is directed to the appropriate facility for reuse, recycling, recovery or disposal. Nonetheless, the effectiveness is reported to be insufficient, and in this case the RFID technology can help. A RFID reader/writer is installed at the exit of the construction site. Information such as departure time, waste type, target places will be written into the RFID tag as a beacon placed on the truck. Upon the arrival of the truck at the designated destination, another RFID reader/writer will read the information, match it, and give or deny the access. Information in the RFID tags can be read and written automatically without intervention of the contractor or lorry drivers thus illegal dumping can be reduced. The RFID system can be combined with other systems, e.g. waste charging scheme, to enable a more efficient management of C&D waste. 2-Construction safety Management Security is extremely important than anything else in the construction industry, during construction there are many incidents that take place (Chae & Yoshida, 2010).

The government recognizes the continuous need for more definitive measures to ensure job safety. The building site exist different kinds of potential danger which can damage peoples’ health, such as hazardous material, fall risk, project fire and operating heavy equipment. RFID tag has also been researched to enhance the security management on project site in recent years A- Hazardous material RFID tags can be attached to hazardous materials so as to keep workers informed of the type and location of hazardous materials and prevent accidental contact on site by identifying hazardous waste and hazardous construction materials from a safe distance. B-Safety of men Construction safety is a key issue in modern CPM. RFID can be implemented to improve safety performance on site. Researches have shown that a major problem accounting for site accidents is that workers do not wear their safety gears properly, particularly in a hot or humid working environment such as a construction site. It is suggested to put RFID tags in safety gears including safety helmet, fluorescent jacket, safety boots, and belt. A system is to detect whether they have worn the gears properly C-Underground projects RFID technology can be used in the Underground projects to improve safety conditions in underground project such as tunneling and subway project, for instance, monitoring workers, the operating status and indicators, groundwater levels, water pressure to protect the workers and equipment operating around them. In one Bypass Tunnel project, contractor applies RFID technology to locate each its employees and construction vehicles for the safety reasons D-Project fire Project fire is a common disaster happening in construction industry that causes injuries and deaths. Poor design of the emergency route and lack of evacuation equipment caused the most of the damage of fire. RFID technology can be used in building evacuation system for getting workers location information which can rapidly calculate the most reliable evacuation routes when building fire happens and send the information to mobile phone to reduce the number of casualties E-Fall protection and prevention Among different proximal causes of fatality in construction industry, falls are the leading cause of fatalities and account for approximately a third of injuries in US construction industry (Huang, 2005) An alert system developed with RFID technology can give a warning when workers are approaching a guardrail or a nearby boundary with a steep change in elevation, and effectively change the behavior of workers and prevent him/her from mistaking courage with ignorance or stupidity. 3-Quality assurance RFID technology can be used to improve construction quality through a number of ways. For example, it was used by the MTRC to indicate the depth of piles as there were construction practices that piles did not actually penetrate to the designated depth, in this

case, RFID tags can be planted into the pile ends and their radio signals will indicate the depth that the piles have actually penetrated into the ground. 4- Tracking of construction materials. In the construction industry RFID is used for the tracking of construction material, labeling this material with extra information, locating buried assets, and preventing collision accidents. Tracking is especially useful for pipe spools as the piping process is expensive (Domdouzis et al., 2007). Tagging materials with RFID tags allows information to be “attached” to the objects (Domdouzis et al., 2007). In construction work the materials used in the building process have to be inspected for safety purposes. The RFID tags can contain information about the measurements that have been carried out, as well as testing procedures and inspection notes. A portable computer can be used to read and write information to the tags as the inspection is taking place. An extension of tagging and tracking mechanisms are locating mechanisms. In the construction industry it is important to be able to back pipes that have been installed underground. Most common methods of locating buried assets are not precise and extensive enough. Some shortcomings include the inability to locate non-metallic pipes, depth limitations, soil limitations, and complex equipment. RFID tags can be located up to 2.8 m deep with low-cost equipment, and they can be used with any type of pipe and in a wide range of soil types. 5-Concrete Placement RFID has the ability to scan items at a distance, which allows concrete trucks to be scanned while in motion as they pass through a gate. Concrete mix design and admixtures, loading time, and delivery location could also be identified as the materials are being placed into material-handling equipment. RFID can be used to track and relate concrete cylinders to truck number and placement time , An RFID concrete placement system would provide critical information for invoicing, payment, and testing through the identification of concrete trucks and concrete test cylinders, ensuring proper delivery, billing, and quality control. (Jalelskis et al., 1995) 6-Concrete and Asphalt Pavement Maturity Monitoring For example, we can apply RFID technology to monitor temperature fluctuations within an identifiable location of placed concrete or asphalt pavement to provide real-time information regarding strength and maturity (Hamalainen 2008). Then, we could get useful information of the temperature readings of the RFID tags to determine curing rates, optimum concrete strength and documented quality control data for the construction. It is demonstrated that inserting RFID tags inside concrete specimens does not influence the strength of the concrete specimens through the field concrete specimen quality test result (Schneider 2003). 7-Tracking labor activities Navon and Goldschmidt (2003) highlighted the need for automatically identifying labor inputs, which is an important project performance indicator in construction projects (Navon 2003). They developed a conceptual RFID based data collection system, which is designed for indoor environments to automatically collect worker's location data at regular time

intervals. This location information will be converted into labor inputs using algorithms. In this approach, RFID tags would be attached to building elements and workers would carry personal units that have RFID readers, which record the information from the tags that the worker passes by. This data would be downloaded once a day and workers' locations would be calculated. 8-Security RFID can also provide security to construction jobsites. Workers, operators, and equipment tagged with RFID can record and make certain proper usage and handling of equipment, materials, and documents. These systems would also ensure that only qualified equipment operators have the ability to operate restricted equipment, reducing the likelihood of misuse and accidents (Goodrum, 2002). Besides tracking objects and people within the jobsite, it would also secure the site from unauthorized people and vehicles. Conclusions and Recommendations RFID technology is endowed with great expectations to provide timely and accurate location information and is used successfully in a variety of industries, such as retail, military affairs, medicine and engineering. But RFID is slowly adopted in the construction industry (Huang 2011). To facilitate understanding the application of RFID in construction industry for researchers, this paper summarizes the comprehensive application of RFID technology in time and schedule management, quality management, material management, safe management, and waste management in construction industry. In spite of its great advantages about RFID technology which are introduced earlier in this paper, however, project owners and construction managers have not yet comprehended the benefits of using RFID. Some technical, economical and ethical hurdles limit RFID technology’s real applications in construction industry. Firstly, the price for RFID technology should be lowered before it can be massively adopted in construction. Secondly, the reading range of a good quality RFID transmitter could reach up to twenty meters, which can be achieved only with an active tag. Passive tags can only transmit up to two meters, which limits the capabilities of data collection, this presents a problem in that the tags are useless unless they can be accessed and read at any desired moment (Jacobs 2002).

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