Koshy Varghese

Indian Institute of Technology Madras | IIT Madras · Department of Civil Engineering

This article explores the underutilised potential of Digital Twins (DTs) beyond their predominant application in facility management, focusing on their promising role in enhancing efficiency across various phases of construction projects. Enabling smooth data transfer between virtual and physical environments, DTs hold considerable potential for en...

Existing progress monitoring systems in the construction industry rely heavily on manual data entry and have limited visualization capabilities. Although several researchers have attempted to address these deltas through various automated technologies, their practical implementation in sites has not reached its full potential. This could be achieve...

Effective waste management is essential for sustainable urban development, and Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste poses a significant challenge due to its volume and composition in urban regions. In recent years, technological advancements have offered innovative solutions to improve the management of C&D waste. This exploratory study primaril...

Automating construction progress monitoring is essential for the timely completion of projects. Computer vision-based construction progress monitoring (CV-CPM) stands out as a promising technology, leveraging 3D point clouds as inputs. Both heuristics-based and learning-based approaches have been explored for identifying building elements. Neverthe...

Pilot tube micro-tunneling (PTMT) has become a mainstream trenchless technique worldwide in high and mega-value projects and will continue to be, as it minimizes the dis-benefits of open-cut method involving traffic congestion, soil subsidence, relocation of existing services, noise and dust emission and safety hazards. As the number of successful...

Achieving higher productivity and higher production rates can help in maximizing profits at the construction site. The current practices at construction sites carry large sources of waste and inefficiencies which is the major cause of a decline in productivity and decrease in production rate. Segmental bridge construction sites are not an exception...

The goal of any construction project is to meet the objectives with the optimised cost and within the prescribed time; it is, however, noted that most construction projects fall behind schedule and, therefore, use additional resources to meet relevant deadlines, which results in cost overruns. Techniques like lean construction have been applied in...

Insurance Industry is traditionally built on trust but in order to buy insurance products, one has to depend on agent and broker distribution channels.This is where the new form of technology driven insurance referred as-Insuretech-serves the purpose for its customers as it provides direct and automated service to its customers. Purpose: This study...

Short-line match casting is a method of producing segmental pre-cast concrete bridges. This segment-production process is centralized, repetitive, compact, and easily adaptable to geometry variations such as plan, vertical, and transition curves. But the main challenge is the complexity of geometry control and the need for high accuracy. The comple...

Efficient performance tracking and monitoring systems can facilitate timely decision-making by management. However, cycle time, which is commonly employed as a monitoring system in segmental production sites, can be time-consuming and only allows for the identification of inefficiencies, rather than supporting decision-making. In this context, oper...

Scheduling is an essential part of project management, and many processes like procurement, fabrication, and resource mobilization are based on these schedules. If the actual targets lag from the pre-planned schedules, waste is generated in the form of idle inventory. It also results in an increased workload on man and machinery, leading to errors...

Project schedules play a critical role in managing a project’s time performance. Network-based techniques such as the Critical Path Method (CPM) and its extension, the Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM) are widely used for project scheduling. Planning engineers have reported several cases where intricate schedule networks are developed to plan a p...

This paper presents a conceptual framework for quantifying the impact of landuse on coastal zone systems from a planning perspective. The framework is validated in a coastal zone stretch in Kerala, South India. Coastal critical landuses are identified through an expert questionnaire survey, and their relationship with the Coastal Zone Health Indica...

Trenchless Enginnering, Poland has published the article in Polish Language.

The need to provide utility services with less disruption to the ground surface has increased the demand for trenchless technology methods like microtunneling. Microtunneling has become a mainstream trenchless technique worldwide in high and mega-value projects and will continue to be, as it minimises the disadvantages of open-cut method involving...

Well-designed facilities result in significant social, economic, cultural, and environmental benefits to their stakeholders. In Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) literature, these benefits are generally referred to as “value in design.” At the same time, it is well known that while value refers to the result of a judgment, values fo...

Progress monitoring is one of the essential tasks while executing a construction project. Effective monitoring will lead to an accurate and timely analysis of the project's progress which is required to make vital decisions for project control. On the other hand, inefficient and delayed updates regarding the project's progress, which is estimated b...

The accuracy of computer vision-based progress monitoring of construction projects depends on the quality of data acquired. The data acquisition can be conducted through different vision-based sensors combined with several options for sensor mounting. Several factors affect this combination and considering these factors in selecting the acquisition...

Automating the process of construction progress monitoring through computer vision can enable effective control of projects. Systematic classification of available methods and technologies is necessary to structure this complex, multi-stage process. Using the PRISMA framework, relevant studies in the area were identified. The various concepts, tool...

Digital twins are predominantly used for facility management of constructed buildings. However, their application for the construction phase has not been much. They hold a high potential to improve the efficiency of the construction phase of projects. This article aims to highlight the potential applications of Digital twin for construction project...

I am Varun Kumar Reja, a joint doctoral research scholar exploring computer vision-based monitoring of construction projects. My research area broadly focuses on Automation in Construction and Construction Management. I am currently pursuing a Joint PhD at IIT Madras and the University of Technology Sydney. This poster highlights my preliminary fin...

Progress monitoring is the backbone for construction project planning and control. It helps construction managers in keeping a check for timely project completion. There are several ways to monitor a project's progress; however, the widely used are traditional techniques that are manual, time-consuming, requires significant effort, and are prone to...

Successful delivery of construction projects is significant for the economic growth of a country. Interface management must be given due importance for competent management of a construction project. Collaboration amongst the stakeholders of a project helps to ease the interface management issues amongst them. However, it is crucial to understand t...

Progress quantification of construction projects is critical for project managers to manage projects effectively. The trade-off between computation time and accuracy is a key aspect while selecting the quantification method. Though accuracy is essential, project managers require real-time information about quantities of work completed on various bu...

Efficient project monitoring is a key to a project's success. Linear construction projects span across large distances and require similar activities to be carried out repeatedly over multiple small segments for project completion. Thus, monitoring their progress becomes challenging. This is a matter of concern since proper progress monitoring can...

Collaboration amongst stakeholders in a construction project plays a significant role in managing and completing a project successfully. It specifically helps in interface management amongst the stakeholders. Among the various aspects of collaboration, there are two key factors that predominant. Firstly, the psychological factors that define a pers...

Generating as-is 3D Models is constantly explored for various construction management applications. The industry has been dependent on either manual or semi-automated workflows for the Scan-to-BIM process, which is laborious as well as time taking. Recently machine learning has opened avenues to recognize geometrical elements from point clouds but...

Real-time monitoring of the condition of equipment enhances effective decision-making in terms of machine maintenance and operational efficiency. This study presents a multi-layered system architecture to monitor the real-time health of a sensor-integrated hand-tool. The architecture is designed based on specific components, features, and requireme...

Learning by doing creates a marked impact on a trainee's cognitive ability. Technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) etc. aid in developing platforms to enhance the learning experience of users. These technologies can be particularly effective in construction sites which are complex and contain hazards difficult to foresee....

For the conservation of a structurally dilapidated built-heritage, documentation at all stages is crucial. Recording of such structure in the initial assessment stage is often challenging as it involves the scanning of ruin which is mostly a crumbled portion of a collapsed structure with broken geometry. Also, the growth of vegetation, inaccessibil...

Lean’s dual focus on improving business value and elimination of waste have made it a popular business improvement strategy. Though Lean has several promising benefits in terms of transparency, improvements in the safety, quality, and productivity, its sustenance over a period is not very evitable. Research asserts it to several barriers like socia...

IoT based platforms are enhancing decision- making capabilities in many sectors. The impact of IoT in construction has not been significant because of the unstructured nature of the process and the project-based approach to construction. Further, the technology platforms available today do not support high data flow from distributed locations as re...

Purpose The building design processes today are complex, involving many disciplines and issues like collaboration, concurrency and collocation. Several studies have focused on understanding and modeling formal information exchange in these processes. Few past studies have also identified the importance of informal information exchanges in the desi...

On-site data collection during construction activities help in evaluating productivity rates and preparing more accurate schedules. One of the challenges here is in collecting data automatically such that activity start times and durations can be computed reliably. This paper proposes a methodology to infer construction activities that are being pe...

Recent studies suggest that Lean concepts can be successfully adopted only when it is aligned with the organizational culture (OC). OC can be defined as the shared values and beliefs of people, according to which they perceive, react and act in any situation. For sustained and effective adoption of Lean, it is important to institute Lean philosophy...

There is a large programme of metro-rail construction in India, upgrading public transportation systems to provide rapid transit to millions of people in major Indian cities. The scale of this development makes it important to innovate as improvements in design, construction and operations can have a significant impact on built asset sustainability...

Hand shredded content-less pages reassembly is a challenging task. This has applications in forensics and fun games. The process is even more tedious when the number of pages from which the fragments are obtained is unknown. An iterative framework to solve the jigsaw puzzles of multiple hand shredded content-less pages has been proposed in this pap...

Generation and quality of as built models influence the subsequent applications such as progress monitoring, quality control, and deviation detection. The quality of any 3D reconstructed model heavily depends on the raw inputs and the post processing involved. While laser and LiDAR-based scanning are widely prevalent, lower cost equipment and senso...

(http://www.nicmar.ac.in/journal.php?Pid=1&Cid=13&Jid=19&Mid=68&S=1) Project resources such as labor, material, and equipment are kept minimal to maintain the efficient working capital. Therefore, the limited resources need to be planned and scheduled in such a way that the project performances are met with minimum and acceptable deviations. Resou...

This paper presents a methodology to use structural responses to monitor the progress of construction processes. The methodology was implemented on a launching girder used for viaduct construction of a metro rail project. A strain-based wireless sensor network was used for data acquisition. Structural responses from the launching girder were used t...

Reassembling hand shredded content-less pages is a challenging task, with applications in forensics and fun games. This paper proposes an efficient iterative framework to solve apictorial jigsaw puzzles of hand shredded content-less pages, using only the shape information. The proposed framework consists of four phases. In the first phase, normaliz...

The Indian construction industry faces increasing challenges amidst serious performance shortfalls. Confronting similar issues in past decades, other countries such as the UK, USA, and Singapore commissioned high-powered studies and set up industry development bodies to address their own priorities. Initiatives in other countries are briefly review...

The practice of scheduling has undergone significant developments in the last few decades. Despite such developments schedules are criticized for its ineffectiveness in planning and controlling of construction projects. Research shows that when complexity of projects increases the value of schedule as a tool to help achieve on time completion of pr...

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is progressively being adopted for precast construction as it facilitates efficient design, manufacturing and construction through generation and management of the virtual models incorporating both the physical attributes and functional behavior. Several studies have addressed the application of BIM for precast c...

Process-plant projects are inherently complex and successful delivery requires effective coordination of multi-disciplinary teams across project phases. While each major project phase—engineering, procurement & construction will have a preferred sequence of deliverables, this sequence will be disrupted due to constrains and requirements of other ph...

While planning resource management systems in rural areas, it is important to consider criteria that are specific to the local social conditions. Such criteria might change from one region to another and are hence best identified using a participatory approach. In this work, we propose a participatory framework to identify such criteria and derive...

Launching Girder is an equipment extensively used in prefabricated segmental construction of viaducts. It is used to lift, assemble, post-tension and load the spans of bridges constructed using the incremental launching method. Currently, there is limited automation in the operation of launching girders worldwide. Construction efficiency can be imp...

Launching Girder is an equipment extensively used in prefabricated segmental construction of viaducts. It is used to lift, assemble, post-tension and load the spans of bridges constructed using the incremental launching method. Currently, there is limited automation in the operation of launching girders worldwide. Construction efficiency can be imp...

Purpose – Worker activity identification and classification is the most crucial and difficult stage in work sampling studies. Manual methods of recording are tedious and prone to error and, hence automating the task of observing and classifying worker activities is an important step towards improving the current practice. Very recently, acceleromet...

Researchers have identified the dependency structure matrix (DSM) as a potential tool to explicitly identify iteration blocks and to evaluate the resulting sequence. Factors such as duration of activity, duration of rework, location of feedback variables, size of block, and number of loops within a block influence the overall duration of a project....

Today several activities of a construction project can be supported with information technology tools. However, there have been many cases of technology adoption failure. Lack of understanding about the process of technology adoption is often pointed out as the reason. This paper is based on a study to explore BIM technology adoption process and at...

The article deals with the studies related to the production of precast segments for the Tapovan Vishnugad HEP project (TVHEPP) in Uttarakhand, India. The project and its significant characteristics, and the management aspects related to productivity improvement are presented. The Tapovan Vishnugad hydroelectric power project (TVHEPP), a run-off ri...

: Preliminary investigations on accelerometer-based activity recognition in construction have shown that it has good potential to be utilized for recognizing categories of work in a construction trade. Selecting the accelerometer locations is an important consideration in activity recognition studies, but currently it is decided primarily on the ba...

Work sampling has been accepted as a valuable method for assessing the productivity of workforce in construction sites. It helps in identifying the problem areas and gives direction for productivity improvement programmes. But, observing and categorizing work activities is a tedious and difficult task in work sampling assignment. Video-based method...

Design process is complex and tightly linked with product model. Since, sophistication in the product models increase with emerging modelling tools, the process complexity also increases, demanding support of process modelling tools. This paper emphasises the need for integrating the process with product model in Architecture, Engineering and Const...

In this paper we propose a general method for contour recognition and DEM (Digital Elevation Models) generation from commercially available printed topographic maps. Automatic contour recognition of a scanned topographic map is a difficult problem due to the presence of closely spaced or broken contours, overlapping data layers and complexities ari...

Building Information Modelling (BIM) Execution Plan (BEP) is a complex process model used to represent the lifecycle process in modern building projects. The complexity is caused by the system of concurrent processes involved that are interdependent by means of information exchange requirements in the form of intermediate models and other informati...

The process of road extraction from high-resolution satellite images is complex, and most researchers have shown results on a few selected set of images. Based on the satellite data acquisition sensor and geolocation of the region, the type of processing varies and users tune several heuristic parameters to achieve a reasonable degree of accuracy....

Recognizing the activities of workers helps to measure and control safety, productivity, and quality in construction sites. Automated activity recognition can enhance the efficiency of the measurement system. The present study investigates accelerometer-based activity classification for automating the work-sampling process. A methodology is develop...

Automated procedures to rapidly identify road networks from high-resolution satellite imagery are necessary for modern applications in GIS. In this paper, we propose an approach for automatic road extraction by integrating a set of appropriate modules in a unified framework, to solve this complex problem. The two main properties of roads used are:...

Automated recognition of worker activities has the potential in aiding quick assessment of labour productivity on construction sites. A novel method called accelerometer based activity recognition has been investigated and preliminary results show that it has good potential for deployment in construction environment. The major decisive factor influ...

Design process is complex in collaborative environments having large team size and many disciplines. Building design also has become sophisticated and schedules have been tightened. Building Information Modelling (BIM), one of the latest tools in building design, based on parametric modelling paradigm, allow the collaborators to be in physically di...

Proposal: The increase in privately funded infrastructure construction in India had compelled project owners to demand highly compressed project schedules due to political risks and early revenue generation. As a result, many of the contracts are based on EPC (Engineering Procurement and Construction) contract enabling the contractor to plan and co...

There is an increasing need for automatically segmenting the regions of different landforms from a multispectral satellite image. The problem of Landform classification using data only from a 3-band optical sensor (IRS-series), in the absence of DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data, is complex due to overlapping and confusing spectral reflectance fro...

The need for ICZM arises often due to inadequate or inappropriate landuse planning practices and policies, especially in urban coastal zones which are more complex due to the larger number of components, their critical dimensions, attributes and interactions. A survey of literature shows that there is no holistic metric for assessing the impacts of...

Measuring and controlling productivity of critical activities will have a significant impact on the cost and time performance of a project. The current practice of acquiring productivity data is heavily dependant on manual collection and data entry; hence it is time consuming, costly and difficult. The objective of the present work is to investigat...

Planning methods such as CPM and PERT cannot model the iterative details of design processes. It has been demonstrated that the Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) is an effective method to model iterative process. However, formulating the DSM on large construction projects, using current methodologies is challenging. To address this challenge, a str...

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for developing a communication platform to monitoring construction projects remotely. The need for remote monitoring is a requirement today in the construction industry as the number of project sites has increased significantly and the expertise available to resolve site related problems is not easily avai...

In remote sensing systems one of the most important features needed are roads, which require automated procedures to rapidly identify them from high-resolution satellite imagery, Many approaches for automatic road extraction have appeared in literature , which vary due to the differences in their goals, available information, algorithms used and as...

Dependency structure matrix (DSM) concepts have been applied effectively to represent and manage complex design processes. However, the author's attempts to implement the concepts on large construction projects faced limitations. The key limitation was that the identification of elements for activity DSM at the appropriate level of abstraction requ...

Construction of Breakwater requires large volumes of appropriately graded rock. Geological characteristics and blasting practices at the quarry determine the gradation of the quarried rock. If the gradation of quarried rock does not meet design requirements, there is wastage of quarried rock or additional cost to reprocess it to meet requirements....