A case study towards assessing the impact of mixed reality-based inspection and resolution of MEP issues during construction

Abstract

Despite advances in 3D clash detection during preconstruction, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) installations are still prone to the detection of unforeseen clashes during construction. These issues must be resolved as quickly as possible to prevent significant schedule delays. Through interviews and field observations, this case study investigates the impact of mixed reality (MR) on the inspection and resolution of field-detected MEP issues from product, organization, and process (POP) perspectives. For the product impact, preliminary findings from the field interviews show that MR-based inspection would increase the quality of MEP installation by identifying errors easily and resolving them faster. For the organizational impact, we modeled and compared the current (as-is) and MR-integrated (to-be) MEP field issue resolution workflows using Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and determined that MR-based inspections can decrease the coordination overhead between MEP engineers and superintendents by up to 75%. This translates into at least a 50% faster resolution of an MEP issue for the process impact. The paper contributes to the practice of MR-based field inspection by providing a method to quantify potential time savings by integrating MR into the MEP field issue resolution workflow and field interview questions for MEP engineers and superintendents to further examine the use of MR during inspection activities in construction projects. Our observations of MEP superintendents and engineers during field inspection showed that not all building information visualized in MR is useful for their inspection tasks. We developed a classification for building information usefulness to help construction project managers who are deploying MR determine useful information for the task at hand that needs to be integrated into the 3D MR model for MR-based inspections.