The effects of weather on construction scheduling webinar
Weather may adversely impact construction productivity and cause significant project delays. Under the project ‘Weather-wise’ funded by NERC and the CIOB, Dr Pablo Ballesteros-Pérez and Dr Stefán Thor Smith, along with Costain and CIRIA have been working on developing a web-based free tool, that can anticipate the likely time impacts that weather events can have on a construction schedule. Their tool uses the data from the last 30years of United Kingdom hourly weather reports.
The impact of (adverse) weather is a common cause of delays, legal claims and economic losses in construction projects. Research has recently been carried out aimed at incorporating the effect of weather in project planning; but these studies have focussed on either a narrow set of weather variables, or a very limited range of construction activities or projects.
Findings of this study have indicated that UK weather extends construction project durations by an average of 21%. However, using climatological data derived from weather observations when, planning could lead to average reductions in project durations of 16%, with proportional reductions in indirect and overhead costs.
This webinar on Monday 22 October showed why the weather is relevant for you as a construction scheduler, how its influence can be quantified, and how you can use that influence in your favour to more carefully plan your projects.
Dr Pablo Ballesteros-Pérez is a civil engineer, geological engineer, MSc in Project Management and PhD in Engineering Projects and Innovation, all from the Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.
Since April 2018, he is Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University. Before joining this university, he worked for over two years at the University of Reading, for three years at the Universidad de Talca (Chile) and for five years as part-time lecturer at Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain).
Before joining the academia full-time in 2013, he was the Head of the Construction tendering department (2007-2012) in an international construction company. Previous to this in 2007, he had worked for five years as a construction project engineer in the Spanish construction private sector for two consultancy companies.
He is the author of 28 international peer-reviewed journal publications, 30 conference papers, one book chapter and one book on different areas of construction management and operational research. He is a guest lecturer at the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain), and the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo INTEC (Dominican Republic) where he teaches quantitative techniques in project management once and twice a year, respectively.
His broad academic area of interest is Construction Project Management. His two major research lines to date are Operational Research, and Applied Statistics in Competitive Bidding and the Influence of weather in construction productivity. He has also developed some research strands and publications in other areas, such as project scheduling and team formation with Sociometric techniques.
Dr Stefán Thor Smith is a lecturer in Energy Systems and the Built Environment at the University of Reading. Integrating energy system models with urban and regional scale meteorology, his research addresses questions on energy system dynamics, demand, and associated environmental impacts. More specifically, his research focuses on issues relating to energy demand and supply, and the interplay between energy and environmental conditions. Through his work, he has had significant involvement in the development, use, and evaluation of models for the purpose of understanding how energy systems are influenced by environmental conditions and in turn, how energy use impacts on environment. His research addresses understanding of energy systems through modelling at different temporal and spatial scales; issues relating to climate change (resilience and adaptation) in the context of the built environment; and weather-informed probabilistic decision making. His research predominantly centres on the dynamics of energy systems and meteorology in an urban context.
Stefán has been Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on a range of NERC, EPSRC and Climate-Kic projects covering a range of topics from smart and sustainable urban districts to green infrastructure impacts on energy. He is the Lead for the Energy and Environmental Research Group within the School of the Built Environment and coordinates a University-wide Energy Research Network.
Pablo and Stefán have very kindly allowed their presented material to be made available for viewing.
The slides on Slideshare and the webinar recording on YouTube is now available in our APM resources area and also embedded below for reference.
Questions raised during the recording have been reviewed and together with the responses published below.
This webinar content is suitable for professionals with all levels of experience.
This weather tool is now in a permanent host location. The creators sincerely desire feedback from anyone reviewing the tool.
Tool location details: https://weatheraware.reading.ac.uk/schedule/
Username: weatheraware
Password: construction
The paper is open access, so free to download by anyone. The link to all the weather UK productivity maps can also be downloaded as ‘Supplemental online material’ in the same link, or alternatively here.
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