Optimizing construction planning and scheduling through combined virtual prototyping technology and building information models

As the design of building has become more complex nowadays, it is very difficult for project managers to compute the time of construction planning and scheduling accurately. There is a pressing need of high level computer-assisted technologies to develop a comprehensive construction planning and schedule before a project is actually built. Currently, these computer-assisted technologies are often limited to the function for the examination of constructability or so. This paper introduces the use of combined virtual prototyping (VP) technology with Building Information Models (BIMs) to optimize the construction planning and scheduling. A real-life case study is adopted in the paper to show how the VP technology and the BIMs are used to conduct construction planning and scheduling, particularly focusing on arranging tower cranes to achieve the construction floor cycle.