BIM-Enabled Issue and Progress Tracking Services Using Mixed Reality

Abstract

This paper reports on a case study in collaborationwith an industry partner to explore the value creation potentials of Mixed Reality (MR) in construction. MR is a technology that allows for intuitive interaction with digital data through overlays on the real world, giving immediate access to the data of a construction site to quickly track or resolve possible issues. While prior research identified potential applications of MR in construction, the evaluation of MR in real contexts is lacking. Thus, this paper describes a user study that evaluates an MR-assisted inspection task with the participation of nine construction professionals. The results reveal that the average time needed to track an issue with the Building Information Modeling (BIM)-enabled MR application takes less than a minute, compared to an hour for the standard process. Furthermore, the participants reported that working with the MR application was enjoyable and they would like to use it more frequently. Finally, based on the user study’s findings, this paper develops two service concept prototypes that could be implemented by the industry partner.