Measuring production rates for the construction of concrete bridge piers.

Abstract

Production rates in the construction industry vary from project to project and vary in effect to the quality of work, cost of the project and time spent to complete the project. Production rates for the construction of concrete bridge piers in particular is an aspect that has not been explored in the past due a lack of standard measurement systems to measure production rates and thus leading to a decline in production rates of overall bridge projects. A difficulty in the planning processes of scheduling and budgeting is identified, a result of lack of metrics based on while measuring production rates, which in turn morphs into cost over runs and time overruns. This research provided a standard measurement of work and a linear regression predictive models to make the planning process less tedious and more accurate thus offering a partial solution to cost and time overruns. The data necessary to build these models was collected from a total of five piers with various shapes and sizes. Three linear regression models whose dependent variable was production rates in all instances and independent variables were steel works duration, concrete casting duration and duration for formwork installation respectively were trained using this data. These models were built to assist construction project teams to be able to predict optimum crew configurations for the different activities involved and maximise production rates during the planning stage in construction projects. Furthermore, the data was used to run a Monte-Carlo simulation to obtain a production rate of 0.273339 m3 /hr. for the construction of concrete bridge piers