Developing support for BIM-based takt time schedules for production control

Cost and schedule overruns are a major issue in the construction industry and a variety of location and activity-based planning, and control methods are used to address these issues. Takt time planning (TTP) has recently gained increased attention in Scandinavia through its use of fixed durations, use of location as a resource and demand on trade-completion and control before moving to the next location. The desire is to create a stable pace of work for each trade through a sequence of locations. There are also challenges to accomplish and communicate takt time schedules. However, through a 4D based collaborative planning approach, communication of the plan and a better understanding of the project and its challenges in production is reached. Thus, this paper aims to explore the possible direct connection between BIM, TTP and collaborative planning. The paper starts with a review of current research and practices and then follows with the three cases of application of takt time in BIM projects in production to identifying challenges in practice. From this the paper then compares and analyzes the cases and the three cases. The conclusion is that an integration of takt time and BIM through a collaborative planning system is viable, and that such a system would enable a direct connection between the TTP and the model