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Record W4416306757 · doi:10.1108/ecam-03-2025-0385

Illustrating the impact of implementing work zones, adjusting work patterns and optimizing crew starting positions to minimize spatial conflicts

2025· article· en· W4416306757 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.
fundA Canadian funder is recorded on the work.

Bibliographic record

VenueEngineering Construction & Architectural Management · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicBIM and Construction Integration
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Alberta
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsCrewWork (physics)WorkflowTask (project management)ProductivityCockpitSpatial planningResource (disambiguation)

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Purpose The construction industry frequently encounters problems with low productivity leading to delays in project schedules. This delay is often addressed by increasing manpower to perform adjacent tasks simultaneously. Although this approach can theoretically expedite project completion, it often results in spatial conflicts, as work teams must coordinate their movements within limited spaces. These conflicts cause congestion and reduced productivity, highlighting the need for better spatial planning strategies to align manpower increases with efficient crew movement. Design/methodology/approach This study employs simulation to investigate spatial management strategies for mitigating the negative effects of increased manpower. The analysis focuses on the interior finishing of flooring areas, which are subdivided into smaller zones to represent distinct workspaces. Task durations are estimated using a beta distribution, with potential spatial conflicts considered. Several alternative strategies for organizing the workflow are then tested to identify the most effective approaches for optimizing spatial planning. Findings The findings show that three spatial management strategies significantly improved performance. First, defining clear work zones reduced spatial conflicts by 68.3% and cut delays from 12.97% over the ideal two-team time in the unplanned case to 3.47%. Second, implementing structured work patterns, such as the serpentine approach, further limited team interference and provided a more predictable workflow. Third, combining work zones with optimized starting positions achieved near-ideal performance, with only 1.01% delay over the ideal and 94.7% fewer conflicts than the unplanned scenario, demonstrating the strong impact of strategic spatial planning on reducing delays and enhancing resource use. Originality/value This paper contributes to the research field by highlighting the critical role of strategic spatial planning as well as providing guidance for practitioners with directly applicable on-site spatial management strategies for avoiding production congestion when increasing manning.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.487
Threshold uncertainty score0.979

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.006
GPT teacher head0.220
Teacher spread0.214 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it