Have you ever been startled by the jarring “thud” of your car hitting a massive pothole, the ensuing moments filled with dread as you wait to see if you’ve sustained tire damage or worse? The potential for expensive car repairs can cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
Or perhaps you’ve experienced the frustration of encountering unexpected traffic jams because of a construction project that was supposed to be finished weeks ago. You wait for ten or fifteen minutes, or even more, for traffic to smooth out. Maybe you end up being late for a doctor’s appointment or your daycare pickup.
If you work in construction project management or construction engineering management, you understand these realities on a personal and professional level.
These common road annoyances highlight the need for efficient and well-managed construction processes. Fortunately, Minitab can help in three key areas: improving long-term durability, predicting equipment maintenance, and streamlined construction project management. Read on to learn how.
#1: Key Independent Variables Impacting Long-Term Durability
In road construction, compressive strength refers to the ability of road materials, like concrete mixtures or asphalt concrete, to withstand a compressive force without a fracture or break or deforming. It’s a critical property and one of the key mechanical properties for ensuring enhanced durability, structural integrity, and load-bearing of a road surface.
Using Minitab’s Predictive Analytics tools, we were able to identify the most critical independent variables, and including mechanical properties, that impact compressive strength on roadways using a relative variable importance plot. A Relative Variable Importance plot, known also as a relative variable importance chart, shows the impact of different predictor variables on the response variable in a model, ranking them based on their contribution to the model's predictive accuracy. Here are our results:
In this case, we can see that the highway age is roughly twice as important as the superplasticizer used. This information can be used to understand the ideal mixture of basic materials (including aggregates, cement, and water) and admixtures (such as superplasticizer), along with identifying any external factor that might lead to a longer service life and/or design life of roadways and road infrastructure.
Download our brochure to see how Minitab can solve three of the most common challenges faced in the construction industry.
#2: Optimizing Equipment maintenance
Equipment maintenance is essential for meeting construction scheduling deadlines and controlling construction costs. Minitab's tools for data analysis enable companies to adopt predictive maintenance for road construction equipment, including asphalt pavers and graders. A company could use Minitab to perform preventive and predictive maintenance for their asphalt pavers by analyzing wear and tear data over time. This approach could help schedule maintenance just before issues arise, potentially preventing costly equipment failure and leading to cost savings in both equipment repair and equipment downtime.
Additionally, Minitab’s parametric and nonparametric growth curves assist in determining the optimal replacement cycles for construction equipment. For example, by analyzing times between failures on their fleet of graders, a company could identify the ideal time to replace this machinery—balancing the risk of failure with the cost of replacement.
The overview for the Weibull distribution above clearly shows at what hour of use a new asphalt grader will typically encounter their first mechanical issues. Using a Pareto chart, the company can see which type of maintenance is usually needed first based on historical datasets and including maintenance records:
Minitab’s ability to evaluate maintenance costs against potential benefits contributes to data-driven insights and highlights the benefits of data driven decision making. By analyzing which maintenance strategies are most cost effective, companies can prioritize maintenance scheduling that delivers the maximum benefit, such as choosing regular preventive or preventative maintenance for high-use equipment.
#3: Construction Risk Management: Managing Project Risks
Effective project management in road construction incorporates: management of potential risks; the careful use of risk identification techniques; and, a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy. This ensures that construction projects stay on schedule and within the budget. Minitab's statistical analysis tools can help a construction project manager in identifying risks and quantifying risk, allowing for proactive measures that prevent construction delays. For example, by analyzing flow of traffic and environmental conditions, a construction project manager can anticipate potential challenges relating to unpleasant weather and different types of soil. This enables them to adjust the construction project plan accordingly, minimizing the risk of unexpected delays and keeping the construction schedule on track. This can be done easily with a Monte Carlo Simulation, the Minitab Workspace tool which assists with simulation modeling and project management risk assessment:
In this example, each step in the project process was added with anticipated upper- and lower-time limits. The final construction project timeline for this specific instance is 203 days. Through simulation modeling, we see that this timeline will likely work roughly 88% of the time:
Beyond risk mitigation, Minitab enhances road construction planning through simulation modeling, allowing project managers to evaluate different schedules and resource allocations. For instance, when planning a highway expansion, Minitab can simulate various crew configurations and equipment allocations to identify the most efficient approach to tasks like grading and paving. This helps ensure that resources are used effectively, preventing bottlenecks and delays while optimizing the overall project timeline. By streamlining these critical aspects of project management, Minitab supports the successful and timely completion of complex road construction projects.
See how Minitab can help predict more accurate construction project timeframes.
The Road to Smoother Journeys
Efficient road construction is crucial for minimizing the everyday frustrations of potholes and traffic delays. Minitab provides powerful tools to enhance material quality, optimize equipment maintenance, and streamline project management, ensuring that roads are built to last and projects are completed on time.
By leveraging Minitab’s data-driven insights, construction teams can mitigate risks, allocate resources effectively, and ultimately deliver smoother, safer roads that stand the test of time. Investing in these solutions not only reduces costs but also enhances the overall driving experience for everyone.
You can get started on your data-driven journey today with a free trial of Minitab Statistical Software or Minitab Workspace. As always, our team of trainers is available to help you solve your most complex challenges.
