AR with Building Information Modelling (BIM)
What is Building Information Modelling
BIM is a digital process that gathers all information and data of a building in a particular place. The process itself also acts as a resource for people to access the data for variety of purpose. By using the BIM, the risk of defects and discrepancies is diminished and thus the cost could be minimized. The data of BIM can be used for illustration of the building's life-cycle. (Building Information Modelling, 2014) To make construction to be more efficient and effective, the BIM allows predictability towards construction cost and time hence reducing the overwhelming costs of construction and the construction time. With the beneficial aspect of BIM, countries like UK have started to implement BIM in their construction industry. (Sarah Davidson, 2014)
Issue: Construction Defects Costs
A nearly £20 billion are spent on rebuilding and fixing of construction defects every year due to the collaboration fault between both design and construction team. As the problem is mainly due to the communication flaw that happens throughout various approach such as documentation, 2D drawing details and onsite meetings. However, this is rarely happened in some high end projects as those projects usually have a higher level of communication standards. By identifying the fundamental problem, the UK government has officially launched BIM by 2011 (David Philip, 2012) and the government also committed to apply the BIM level 2 target by 2016. Since the implementation of BIM, the BIM has reduced down the cost of construction dramatically (McNell et al, 2008) and estimated to save 15-40% of cost of the construction since 2006 (Giel et al, 2010) . Nonetheless, to meet these goals
Inspection of Construction Defects using AR with BIM
In order to reduce the cost of handling the construction defects after the building was built, the inspection of the defects have to be accurate and efficient. By implementing AR technology into the field work inspection, it has proved that AR could make the process more efficient and time saving. (Park et al, 2013)
The process of implementing AR technology is as follow:
1) Objects are detected and the camera position information is estimated through the detected objects.
2) The locations where virtual objects will be registered are predicted using the estimated information.
3) The real world images are combined with the virtual images.
(Automation in Contruction, Park et al, 2013)
In order to reduce the cost of handling the construction defects after the building was built, the inspection of the defects have to be accurate and efficient. By implementing AR technology into the field work inspection, it has proved that AR could make the process more efficient and time saving by undergoes a series of process. (Park et al, 2013) By using the markers on site, the objects on site would be detected and the information will be estimated through the detected objects. Hence, the location of the target defects would be predicted and registered through the application . By combining real world images taken by the device's camera and virtual BIM data, the AR technology could perform the process more accurately and efficiently. With cooperating AR technology, the project managers and workers could verify the outcome of the project with overlaying virtual shapes and dimensions on site or the actual photos. The process would enhance the current manual inspection process and further control on the field work procedure. (X. Wang, P.S. Dunston, 2006)