Automatic Materials Tracking Practices Through RFID Implementation in Construction Projects

Abstract

Materials tracking for materials management play a vital role and contributed a major portion of the total cost in a construction project. In addition, the improper handling and storage of materials at the construction site has made it difficult to track and locate at the time are needed to carry out construction works. These problems subsequently contribute to the project delays and increase in the total project costs. Thus, this paper seeks to identify problems regarding current material tracking practices in materials management processes. In this paper, ICT and potential implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for automatic materials tracking is also scrutinised. Data for this paper was obtained from the literature review and the case studies conducted in several construction projects. Semi-structured interviews with construction practitioners were carried out in order to gain insights into current problems, information and communication technologies (ICT) implementation, and RFID capability in assisting materials tracking practices. This paper reveals that construction projects in Malaysia are still using manual materials tracking practices, basic ICT implementation, and totally none RFID existence. Thus, there is a need for the application of RFID in order to facilitate materials tracking automatically for enhancing construction industry processes through IR 4.0.

The Adoption of IOT in the Malaysian Construction Industry: Towards Construction 4.0

“…Besides sensor usage, RFID is another essential step towards Construction 4.0. However, the implementation of RFID is still low because most of the construction players are comfortable with the manual practice, specifically for material tracking on site (Kasim et al, 2019). Furthermore, in line with the global construction industry, Malaysia has improved its construction industry by implementing the Building Information Modelling (BIM) as part of the adoption of IoT.…”