Applying BIM and visualization techniques to support construction quality management for soil and water conservation construction projects

Constructing soil and water conservation (SWC) facilities is crucial to protect soil and water resources, maintain natural ecology and landscape, and prevent erosion, landslide, debris flow, and other disasters. Due to the existence of mountainous terrain in Taiwan and the frequent prevalence of extreme climate changes, thousands of SWC construction projects are built or renovated all over the island in each year. The responsible central governmental entity (home bureau) in Taiwan continuously seek for solutions to improve their current database management system which collects only numbers, texts, and two-dimensional photos to monitor the construction progresses of these projects. This study applies the building information model (BIM), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to develop a new construction management system that can visualize each construction project on a three-dimensional model and access the project information promptly in a cloud environment to support both home bureau and local bureau (the actual project owner). The proposed system is applied to a case project to demonstrate its benefits in supporting construction quality management. The application results suggest that the governmental bureau should provide sufficient incentives to encourage those middle- or small-size designers and contractors to apply the proposed system to the SWC construction projects.