Adoption of Virtual Reality (VR) for Site Layout Optimization of Construction Projects

Among the significant tasks of construction site management, site layout planning is a crucial activity which leads to project success. Currently the concept of an optimized construction site layout emerge as a result of executing tools and techniques that construction project management discipline provides. Despite the plentiful existence of site layout techniques, the authors of this paper believe that incorporation of Virtual Reality (VR) for jobsite organization is a valuable and modern management phenomenon for optimal planning of the site layout planning. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess traditional practices for site layout planning and introduce the application of VR in construction jobsite organizations involving site layout planning, collision detection and evaluation of construction site layout scenarios. In this paper, two different construction jobsite scenarios for the structural phase of the building construction are created and for optimization purposes implemented through the 3D model developed are on Autodesk Revit software, SketchUp and Lumion. VR box headset is used for testing purposes of the proposed 3D jobsite organization model. A descriptive case study is examined in order to describe the proposed organizational plan for the created scenarios. In this research, questionnaire survey is chosen as one of the research instrument for data collection and evaluation purposes. Results presented in this paper, provide industry professionals with a better understanding of the benefits, advantages and how VR technology improves the effectiveness of jobsite layout planning compared to traditional practices.