RFID facilitated construction material management - a case study of water supply project

Due to the complex and dynamic nature of the construction industry, construction material management faces many unique challenges from material planning, ordering, receiving and storing, handling and distribution, site usage and monitoring (Johnston and Brennan 1996). Poor material management has been identified as a major source for low construction productivity, cost overrun and delay (Fearon 1973, Olomolaiye et al. 1998). Although many fac-tors contribute to the problems of material management, the lack of active, accurate and integrated information flow from material planning, inventory to site use and monitoring is the major contributor. However, it is difficult to obtain such accurate information actively due to the nature of the industry, particularly for large or material intensive projects such as oil or water pipe-laying projects. A Radio Frequency Identification system (RFID) facilitated construction ma-terial management system has been developed to tackle this problem. This latest technology helps the project team to collect material storage and usage in an active and accurate way, and further to facilitate the information flow through the construction material management process with focus on the dynamic material planning, ordering and monitoring. The developed system is being implemented in a water-supply project.