Generating Bills of Materials for Daily Work Orders Consisting of Made-to-stock Materials

The time spent for generating a daily bill of materials (BOM) varies depending on the type of construction work at hand. Our observation at construction sites showed that generating a daily BOM can be time consuming when the work consists of made-to-stock (MTS) types of materials (e.g., in the range of 12 - 68 minutes per daily BOM). To expedite this process of generating a daily BOM consisting of MTS materials, this research introduces the concept of a smallest workface boundary (SWFB) - a boundary that operates with level of development (LOD) 400 elements to help a foreman quickly generate a daily BOM. We carried out three field experiments to iteratively improve the concept. This involved building a prototype with SWFBs and going through iterations of asking foremen to use the prototype for generating daily BOMs, and if shortcomings are observed, addressing them and applying the improved version of the prototype to the next experiment. The three experiments took place at construction sites in UAE, Sweden, and Peru with nine trades (three trades at each site). With the latest version of the prototype, the average time it takes a foreman to generate a daily BOM is 59 seconds.