Identifying tower crane activities with data: the case of the concrete pouring

Purpose The crane plays an essential role in modern construction sites as it supports numerous operations and activities on-site. Additionally, the crane produces a big amount of data that, if analyzed, could significantly affect productivity, progress monitoring and decision-making in construction projects. This paper aims to show the usability of crane data in tracking the progress of activities on-site. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a pattern-based recognition method to detect concrete pouring activities on any concrete-based construction sites. A case study is presented to assess the methodology with a real-life example. Findings The analysis of the data helped build a theoretical pattern for concrete pouring activities and detect the different phases and progress of these activities. Accordingly, the data become useable to track progress and identify problems in concrete pouring activities. Research limitations/implications The paper presents an example for construction practitioners and researcher about a practical and easy way to analyze the big data that comes from cranes and how it is used in tracking projects' progress. The current study focuses only on concrete pouring activities; future studies can include other types of activities and can utilize the data with other building methods to improve construction productivity. Practical implications The proposed approach is supposed to be simultaneously efficient in terms of concrete pouring detection as well as cost-effective. Construction practitioners could track concrete activities using an already-embedded monitoring device. Originality/value While several studies in the literature targeted the optimization of crane operations and of mitigating hazards through automation and sensing, the opportunity of using cranes as progress trackers is yet to be fully exploited.