A Digital Platform for Handling the Construction Build Process in Highways Infrastructure

The construction industry has a long-established reputation for cost and time overruns. This is a particular concern for the UK government when commissioning major infrastructure projects. Therefore, the government is requiring that highways construction companies move to adopt new ways of monitoring projects in the future. Against this background, the thesis investigates the issues that make project management more difficult in highways construction compared with manufacturing, and how the government’s proposals aim to improve the situation. The research resulted in collecting data from experts in the construction industry to find out the current issues of the industry and how digitising the current build process might help to tackle some of these issues. The research then looks at how one of the major UK highways construction companies can implement an asset tracking system that not only satisfies the government’s vision, but goes beyond it to audit, track and manage the actual build process which saves cost and time in the reworking and handover process. The company’s situation along with the government’s proposals are analysed to identify the features required from the proposed system. A prototype system called CATS – Construction Asset Tracking System – was then implemented. The final stage of the research evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of CATS by analysing the data collected from interviewing thirteen managers and engineers in the company. The interviews covered what they saw as the issues in highways construction, followed by a demonstration of CATS if they had not seen it before, and concluded with a discussion of the role they saw for CATS and similar systems.