PI: A Smart Construction Quality Management System

Contractors and site managers need to conduct quality inspections regularly during construction. Such work is time-consuming and labour-intensive, and the resultant quality records are prone to be incomplete or faulty. Besides, contractors nowadays tend to adopt multi-layer subcontracting for construction projects. The presence of multiple subcontractors intensifies the complexity of quality management, and quality deviations may occur under such circumstances. In light of this, researchers from PolyU developed a smart construction quality management system called “PI”, an acronym for both “Project Eyes” and “Project Intelligence”. Integrating machine vision and deep learning technologies, PI detects construction-related objects and identifies the activities of workers and construction machinery from the videos captured by surveillance cameras on the construction site. It can also determine if there are quality deviations or dangers on the construction site. The PI system can greatly improve the quality management process, construction productivity as well as safety performance.