Constructionshows
The increasing digitalisation of business processes in road construction has effected considerable changes. With ever greater frequency building contractors are confronted with complex matters such as industry 4.0, Lean Management or Building Information Modelling (BIM). It is not often completely clear, what the meaning of these current catchwords is and how important it becomes for the civil engineering and road construction. The software solution BPO process optimization developed by Volz Consulting GmbH brings building contractors a major step closer to the practical application. The market leader’s system is successfully used in Germany and 7 other countries by more than 30 building contractors since several years. In 2016 the asphalt amount paved with BPO equalled circa 35% of the total asphalt production in Germany. With BPO processes from project planning through multi project and resource planning up to the paving process and analysis can be made easier, quicker and more transparent. Paving supervisors, paving managers, foremen, mixing plant operators, truck drivers and forwarding agencies are networked with each other to guarantee a more efficient process workflow free of stress.
The German construction company Günter Papenburg Verkehrswegebau GmbH has carried out extensive tests of the high-performance capacity of BPO within the scope of two large and complex major projects. The objective of the project was to plan the construction site, control it by using the real-time module and to document the full construction in detail.
To ensure a holistic process control, all mixing plants and the whole truck logistics have been networked with the construction site via an interface to the fleet management. This networking ensures a uniform database which enables an overview of the current paving process and delivery situation for everyone involved.
By using the interface in conjunction with the weighing systems of the mixing plants all delivery notes are automatically captured and no longer have to be registered manually. By integrating Günter Papenburg’s existing fleet management system with the location data of more than 600 trucks into BPO, further information (as for example location data and the estimated arrival times of the trucks) can be calculated in BPO and shown to the paving manager on the construction site. This leads to a virtual supply chain, which at any time shows the construction site when they can expect the next asphalt delivery to arrive. The documentation of the truck waiting times took place automatically by using a beforehandly fixed geo fence, a kind of virtual tracker surrounding the construction site and the location data of the trucks.
The integration of BPO into the paving process was achieved without any trouble due to the intuitive operating concept and because of a stable system architecture, even if there is temporarily no mobile connection available.
By this way 70’000 tonnes of asphalt were planned and controlled with BPO in real time on the autobahn A 14 within multiple 24-hours-shifts. To that three kinds of mixed materials from five different mixing plants were timed according to the just-in-time principle.
The integration of external fleets is no great challenge for BPO as the free App BPO Live is available in all common app stores and no rental equipment is needed.
Another project was carried out on the main road B 180 near Rothenschirmbach. Within 10 days nearly 12’500 tonnes of binder layer and 4’400 tonnes of surface layer out of three different mixing plants has been paved using the compact asphalt paving method. The whole logistic handling of the mixed materials was planned with the module BPO Compact Asphalt. On this road section three bridges had to be considered by means of added times for transfer operations.
Only surface layer had to be paved on these bridges which meant an additional challenge for the handling of the mixed materials logistics and for the Dynapac paver.
As usual on this construction site the paving crew was able to handle the system independently, only after a short instruction and without interruptions. The material flow between the different mixing plants were coordinated and displayed in real time, so that having both kinds of material available at an equal ratio on site was ensured at any time.
Further features, for example the direct communication between the construction site, mixing plants and trucks using the integrated newsroom were also used from the first day on and the paving operation was documented within the integrated paving diary.
BPO links the location data of the road paver with delivery notes, notices and photos with BPO. By this means they can be allocated to the corresponding paving section and to the final building data model according to the Building Information Modeling (BIM). As a result, it is retraceable which delivery note corresponds to which construction field, together with all data that has been documented and all messages that were sent during the pavement inside the newsroom. This enables a detailed and exact documentation for each individual paving section. The analysis can be exported after finishing the paving process by a simple mouse click.
Furthermore a target-actual comparison is issued so that material consumption and many more informational data can be analysed.
Michael Bayer, paving manager at GP Verkehrswegebau GmbH puts it in a nutshell: „BPO has convinced us because the planning process is much easier than it was before and because of the functioning real time control of our processes. Therefore BPO will be rolled out within the whole company in 2017 and will be a fixed component for all our projects in asphalt. “
Numerous companies in Europe already have decided to start their digitalisation and achieve the connected construction site by using BPO. BPO has become a fixed component within civil engineering and roadway construction for well-known companies such as GÜNTER PAPENBURG, WOLFF & MÜLLER, JOHANN BUNTE, VOGEL-BAU, ASA BAU, SAW, MOROF, KEMNA BAU, MAX BÖGL, FAHRNER BAU und STOLZ and many others.
Periodically Volz Consulting GmbH offers the possibility for interested companies to visit current paving projects on-site that are planned with BPO and controlled in real time. Interested parties can register free of charge under: [email protected]
contact details and copyright:
VOLZ CONSULTING GmbH
Industriestraße 112
75417 Mühlacker
Tel.: 07041 / 4099570
Mail.: [email protected]
www.volzconsulting.de
