A study of RFID application for improving the installation process of precast concrete panels in a housing project

Two types of information, namely; related jobsite information along the process and feedback information have been found as essential elements for construction process improvement. In current practices, construction process has faced barriers in obtaining these two types of information. To overcome this problem, the new information system is proposed, namely; Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system which consists of RFID as an automatic identification and data collection device integrated with database. Precast concrete installation process in housing projects has been selected to be a case study. The research had been initiated by reviewing related literatures and conducting field observations. The results of these initial studies are utilized as a basis in constructing the conceptual model of RFID application in precast installation process. The conceptual model is then realized by exploring the RFID characteristics and developing the prototype of RFID system afterwards. The exploration of RFID characteristics aims to reveal the basic characteristics of RFID that are essential to be recognized in supporting the proposed conceptual model. The general findings show that the tag orientations, tag positions, distance, interrogation angle, and the presence of other tags affect the RFID performance. The vertically oriented tag performs more superiorly than the horizontal one. The reading rate, the maximum amount of detected tags at once, and the minimum spacing distance between tags tend to decrease as the reading distance increases. The coverage area tends to be smaller when the reader rotates either horizontally of vertically. The design and development of RFID system is a prototype. It aims to enable the involved parties to collect the required data and to access the required information. The RFID system involves pre-input, input, and output modules. The pre-input and input modules collect associated data to the details of concrete panel information, and the information of precast installation process respectively. The output module presents the required information of the precast concrete panel and the information of the installation events. The information of the installation events is presented in forms of table and graphical views to provide simple analysis of the current precast installation practice. The RFID system provides related jobsite information and feedback information which can be used to improve the installation process of the precast concrete panels.