RFID and BIM-Enabled Prefabricated Component Management System in Prefabricated Housing Production

Prefabricated buildings have been shown to provide a new way of sustainable construction to reduce the amount of work on construction sites, reduce pollution, shorten construction time, and increase safety. However, many issues in the actual production process (e.g., quality check, storage, and installation of the prefabricated components) are mainly caused by the lack of the information being collected and shared. In order to better monitor and manage the prefabrication process efficiently, this research proposes a framework that integrates radio frequency identification (RFID) and building information modeling (BIM) technologies. The scope of this paper is the discussion of the framework and its application for prefabricated housing production. A preliminary study focused on the manufacturing process of integrating RFID tags with the prefabrication of the components. About 200 reinforced concrete components were embedded with a passive RFID tag. Results of the experiments showed a 90% reduction of signal strength when passive RFID tags are embedded in concrete, with less than a 1.5% fail rate. Current RFID tag implanting techniques still need to be improved to meet the actual demands of the construction industry and increase the signal strength. Significantly, this research shows promising results that the framework could establish a high efficient, low cost, and easily implementable information capturing and sharing system for further planning and management of prefabrication.