Enhancing Facility Management Using RFID and Web Technology in Construction

Facility management (FM) has become an important subject for research and academic study in real estate and construction. To benefit most, organizations need to understand that they must be informed clients in managing their facilities and properties. Managing facility management effectively are extremely difficult owing to various environments. With the advent of the Internet, web-based information management solutions enable information dissemination and information sharing among related participants. Generally, facility managers and staffs require access to the facility location to handle inspection and maintenance work at any facility locations. However, current desktops and notebooks are not suitable for using on facility locations because of problems in transportability. Facility managers and staffs generally handle various types of information, including specification, checklists and reports. Facility managers and staffs generally use sheets of paper and/or field notes. Consequently, there is serious rework progress regarding the data capture and input in inspection and maintenance progress. Managing the facility maintenance information play an important role in the view of facility management. Therefore, controlling and managing facilities effectively are extremely difficult owing to the environment of various facilities conditions. With the advent of the Internet, web-based information management solutions enable information dissemination and information sharing among involved facility management participants. Furthermore, integrating promising information technologies such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) scanning and data entry mechanisms, can help improve the effectiveness and convenience of information flow in the tracing management. This study presents a novel system called Mobile RFID-based Facility Management (MRFIDFM) System for the acquisition and tracing of facility maintains information on locations and providing a facility maintains information sharing platform among all participants using web technology and RFID enabled PDA.