Date of Award

4-2008

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Civil and Construction Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Jun-Seok Oh

Second Advisor

Dr. Ahmad Jrade

Third Advisor

Dr. Hubo Cai

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Facility layout is an important to determine a proper arrangement of temporary facilities in a construction site. It significantly impacts productivity and safety of construction. The objectives of layout planning are to minimize travel distance and time, to decrease the facility transportation and setup costs, and to improve site safety. Despite the importance of facility layout, it is often overlooked in the planning phase. Several models have been developed taking some of these factors into consideration; however, construction managers and site planners often regard cost as the most important factor in layout planning and pay less attention to safety and efficiency.

This study develops models for optimal construction site layout that takes both site safety issue and efficiency issue into consideration by adopting the space syntax theory. The models incorporate both safety and efficiency issues into an optimization problem, and include three layout optimization variables. Each model is developed in five phases: (1) formulating individual and main objective functions for the site layout problem; (2) determining or calculating the required data; (3) quantifying the objective values; (4) evaluating constraints in the problem; and (5) implementing a genetic algorithm for site layout optimization. The models developed in this way are tested in a case study and individual objective values are compared. This study sheds light on the importance of considering combined objectives in determining construction site layout and demonstrates potential applications of the space syntax theory in determining spatial safety.

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