Proactive Approach for Reducing Non-Value Adding Activities Due to Time-Space Conflicts

Time-space conflicts are one of the major causes of productivity losses at construction sites, and they are preventable and manageable if identified prior to construction. Current industry practice and project management tools and techniques do not support proactive time-space conflict management. Our research focuses on formalizing and automating time-space conflict analysis to assist construction managers to proactively manage spatial conflicts between activities at their sites. In this paper, we describe a case that highlights the challenges involved in time-space conflict analysis and discuss an initial framework showing the factors that determine the schedule impacts of spatial conflicts between activities. Using the presented framework, a construction manager can assess the type of a time-space conflict and predict the schedule impacts of spatial conflicts. Realizing the schedule impacts of time-space conflicts before they occur at a construction site, s/he can proactively manage spatial conflicts between activities and eliminate non-value adding activities that occur at construction sites due to time-space conflicts.