Advanced Progress Control of Infrastructure Construction Projects Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning Technology

Effective progress control is vital for steering infrastructure construction to completion with minimum delay. Walking through the infrastructure project site to record progress in different activities is time-consuming, requiring information extracted from construction drawings, schedules, and budgets, as well as data collected from the construction site. This process can be automated by using advanced remote sensing technologies. This study contributes to progress monitoring in large horizontal infrastructure projects. It presents a practical automated method using laser scanning technology that can track the project’s progress in a real construction environment with limited human input. It is robust and accurate and is currently operational. The system capitalizes on the success of laboratory experiments. This system deals with occlusions effectively, accelerates the registration process of multiple scans, reduces the noise in the data, recognizes the objects of irregular shape, and is economically feasible. It provides evidence that all current challenges encountered in using laser scanners in monitoring construction progress can be overcome. This method has been successfully tested in the Wacker Drive reconstruction project in Chicago, IL.

Chicago, 1934

This chapter describes the impact of the Great Depression on the Chicago real estate market. The gravity of the Depression can be understood by what was not built. For instance, Walter Ahlschlager had planned a massive complex of office towers, showrooms, lodging, and leisure facilities known variously as Crane Tower, Chicago tower, and the Apparel Mart. Announced by a group of apparel executives in June 1928, the scheme proposed a seventy-five-story setback tower atop a base that was to span railyards between the extended Randolph Street and Wacker Drive. However, nothing more was heard of the project after the October crash. The idea of a city rising above the Illinois Central yards attracted other schemes but no serious investment until after 1950.