Developing and Laboratory Testing a Smart System for Automated Falsework Inspection in Construction

Abstract

The procedure of falsework inspection has the potential for improvements in accuracy and time efficiency. The current process of inspection is often time-consuming and there is a potential for human error that could lead to undesirable outcomes. This paper presents an innovative smart system with the purpose of achieving an automation in falsework inspection. The system is basically a combination of radio frequency identification (RFID) with a virtual three-dimensional (3D) model that is represented by the AutoCAD 36 drawing viewer on a mobile device. Member identification is to be addressed by the RFID component, while the virtual model is expected to enable more accurate positional identification of members within the entire falsework configuration. A mock-up formwork structure was assembled in order to test this developed system. RFID was found to identify members significantly faster (5.6 s as an average) than by inspecting manually (33.2 s as an average) during 2 demonstrations. Simultaneously, higher inspection accuracy of 96.2% compared to 91.5% was achieved by inspecting manually. However, the smart technology option for component positioning did not have expected results and was less efficient than the currently practiced method. This shows that there is a potential in implementing one of the previous technologies while the other still requires further development before it would be applied to the inspection process. The primary contribution of the research lies in demonstrating the true value of the tangible smart system in an actual situation. In short, it enabled showing its effectiveness during the quantification, but still needs more work in its positioning.