An overview of approaches for utilizing RFID in construction industry

Construction industry has dynamic and uncontrolled environments, where tracking components/materials and accessing related information are challenging tasks. Failure in effectively tracking components/materials and in accessing the related information on demand results in schedule delays and additional labor costs. Due to long read ranges, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology holds the potential for enabling automated tracking of components/materials in dynamic and uncontrolled environments. Also, on-board storage capacity of RFID allows for making information related to a component of a bulk of material readily available to the persons who are handling components and materials. This paper provides an overview of possible applications for RFID use and describes the field tests conducted in several research studies on utilization of RFID in construction industry. The field tests described were performed for tracking pipe spools and precast components during delivery and receipt, tracking precast components in a manufacturer's storage yard, tracking tools, locating materials and transferring material information to construction site. The results of those tests demonstrated that despite some limitations of the current technology, active UHF RFID meets the needs for the selected cases provided that some reasoning mechanisms are developed and implemented for data cleaning and processing purposes.