The Value of Visual 4D Planning in the UK Construction Industry

Performance measurement has received considerable attention by both academic researchers and industry over a past number of years. Researchers have considered time, cost and quality as the predominant criteria for measuring project performance. In response to the Latham and Egan reports to improve the performance of construction processes, the UK construction industry has identified a set of non-financial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Following an increased utilisation of IT based technology in the construction industry and in particular 4D (3D+time) planning. A literature review reveals that a systematic measurement framework to evaluate the value of such systems at both quantitative and qualitative levels does not exist. The aim of this ongoing research is to develop a suitable measurement framework to identify and analyse key performance indicators for 4D applications. Two major issues have been addressed in this research: an absence of a standardised set of 4D based KPIs and lack of existing data for performance evaluation. This paper reports on the first stage of the research study for the identification of 4D performance measures. The ultimate objective of this research is to deliver project based 4D performance measures and to identify how project performance can be improved by the utilisation of 4D planning.