Classification of Challenges in Achieving BIM-Based Safety-Requirement Checking in Vertical Construction Projects

Abstract

Due to the one-off nature of projects, which necessitates setting up of unique production sites, the construction industry requires stringent requirements for safety of the workforce and the public around job sites. Although there are various federal (e.g., OSHA) and local safety regulations (e.g., NYC Department of Buildings codes) to keep construction sites safe and incident free, around 20% of work fatalities in the private industry have been from the construction industry in the past years. Within the current practice, the requirements listed in these regulations are kept within document-based safety plans. The challenge is the large number of safety requirements to be checked with more than 1,000 sections and multiple narratives under each. Given this, the manual approach fails in tracking whether these requirements are properly considered in safety plans, hence resulting in omissions and accidents/incidents due to inadequate implementations of safety requirements. Although automated safety compliance-checking coupled with building information modeling (BIM) has been an opportunity to bring efficiency to the process, there are several challenges that stand in the way of the ideal practice. This research provides the results of rigorous research conducted with the guidance of practitioners in the construction safety and insurance domain, and analysis and implementation of OSHA Part 1926 narratives using model-based checking tools. The results have been consolidated and presented as a taxonomy of challenges along with potential solutions to these challenges. Researchers and practitioners (software vendors, construction companies, regulators) can build on the outcomes to generate solutions to address these challenges.