Integrating BIM and LiDAR for real-time construction quality control

© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. In the construction process, real-time quality control and early defects detection are still the most significant approach to reducing project schedule and cost overrun. Current approaches for quality control on construction sites are time-consuming and ineffective since they only provide data at specific locations and times to represent the work in place, which limit a quality manager’s abilities to easily identify and manage defects. The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated system of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to come up with real-time onsite quality information collecting and processing for construction quality control. Three major research activities were carried out systematically, namely, literature review and investigation, system development and system evaluation. The proposed BIM and LiDAR-based construction quality control system were discussed in five sections: LiDAR-based real-time tracking system, BIM-based real-time checking system, quality control system, point cloud coordinate transformation system, and data processing system. Then, the system prototype was developed for demonstrating the functions of flight path control and real-time construction quality deviation analysis. Finally, three case studies or pilot projects were selected to evaluate the developed system. The results show that the system is able to efficiently identify potential construction defects and support real-time quality control.