An ontological approach for technical plan definition and verification in construction

• An ontological approach for construction plan definition and verification is proposed.
• The construction planning knowledge representation and reasoning are given.
• Enable integrating plan defining & checking processes and enhancing automation level
• The approach validity and limitations are discussed.

Construction planning is a fundamental and challenging process in the management and execution of construction projects. The task of developing technical plans is critical to ensuring the success of a construction project. This task of preparing a technical plan is usually undertaken manually using two separate processes: (1) plan definition and (2) verification/checking. This paper introduces an ontological approach to support the plan definition and verification process. Using this approach, the technical plans are modeled into plan ontology in a layered modeling structure. The verification knowledge is modeled into ontology axioms and semantic rules. A case example is used to demonstrate the proposed approach for pit excavation. In addition, the proposed approach enables the compliance verification process to be undertaken in parallel with the technical plan definition. As a result, the plans' compliance can be ensured during the project delivery process. The research provides a novel ontological and semantic mechanism for reusing plans and their automatic verification in construction, which is semantically reasoned.