A BIM-based approach for automated tower crane layout planning

Tower crane layout design and planning within construction site is a common construction technical issue, and is regarded as a complex combinatorial problem. Previous research focused on utilising either mathematical methods or visualisation tools to find an optimal tower crane layout plan. Both these two approaches require large amounts of manual data input by the layout planners, which is time-consuming and not very practical in industry. The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated approach which combines Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Firefly Algorithm(FA) to automatically generate an optimal tower crane layout plan. Firstly, BIMis utilised to provide inputs for the mathematical model. Then the FA is used to determine the optimal locations of tower cranes and supply points. Finally, the optimal tower crane layout scheme will be visualised and evaluated through BIM-based simulation. A practical case is selected to demonstrate the proposed approach. The final result is promising and demonstrates the practical value of this approach.