Construction industry is suffering from low productivity rate in various projects such as excavation. Although this issue is discussed in literature and several approaches are proposed to address it, productivity rate is still low in construction industry compared to other domains like manufacturing.
Three core components directly affect the overall productivity in construction sector, i.e. labour productivity, raw material productivity, and machine or equipment productivity.
With a focus on construction machinery, three factors influence productivity at excavation sites; i.e. 1) machine-based productivity and its configuration, 2) site layout and environmental conditions, and 3) operators’ behaviour.
Operators’ competence and motivation represent two key parameters that affect their behaviour.
On one side, gamification has attracted a growing area of interest both in literature and practice, seeking to place a layer of entertainment and pleasure to the top of serious activities (with a focus on improving the applicant’s motivation and behaviour). On the other side, telematics systems are utilized to collect operational data of the machine, and calculate its productivity rate. Telematics data are presented to operators (via a built-in screen available in the cabin of the machine) to provide real-time feedback about machine performance. In addition, these data can support machine owners to perceive operators’ behaviour on a real-time basis. To conclude, telematics systems are providing real-time data which can be a great input into gamification.
A guideline is proposed in this dissertation that helps gamification designers to develop more transparent gamification models. This guideline is utilized to introduce a gamification model that gamifies telematics data with a focus on enhancing operators’ behaviour (machine productivity) in loading and transferring activities. The model was implemented at two sites(one recycling and one mining site) and could encourage operators (who were operating wheel-loaders and dump-trucks) to prevent redundant activities like texting, phoning, and even eating while operating the machine. Subsequently, it enhanced overall machine productivity up to 37% during the site observation.
To summarize, a gamified platform in which different operators from different organizations can share their achievements, or can get scored and ranked in a leader-board will potentially lead to a more proper operators’ behaviour at work and subsequently can improve overall productivity rate at construction sites
