Automating construction project quality assurance with RFID- and mobile technologies

The most critical part of a construction project is normally the construction elements that form the structure of the building. Concrete construction elements are often used as support structures and on the facade of the building, but they are vulnerable to manufacturing defects as well as being damaged on-site. Such defects can create a lot of additional costs to all parties involved in the project. Discovering and communicating about errors can be problematic as normally quality assurance is done manually and data is stored in paper format. Our research concentrated on automating the quality assurance of concrete elements. The task was approached by embedding RFID-tags in the elements enabling them to be identified wirelessly and associated with information in a data system. In field conditions users identify the construction elements with a mobile phone and interact electronically with the quality assurance system. As the information is created in digital form, the system can analyze it to detect errors and react automatically, notifying people responsible of faults. This paper presents the implementation of the system and discusses challenges and benefits.