ITcon Vol. 27, pg. 290-311, http://www.itcon.org/2022/15

How pipefitters obtain visual information from construction assembly drawings

DOI:10.36680/j.itcon.2022.015
submitted:July 2021
revised:January 2022
published:April 2022
editor(s):Amor R
authors:Matthew Sears, PhD Candidate
Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
email: Matthew.H.Sears@colorado.edu
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4629-7300

Omar Alruwaythi, Assistant Professor
Department of Civil Engineering, Taibah University, Saudi Arabia
email: oruwaythi@taibahu.edu.sa
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9587-0580

Paul M. Goodrum, Professor and Department Head
Department of Construction Management, Colorado State University, USA
email: Paul.Goodrum@colostate.edu
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5656-1240
summary:An extensive framework has been developed for studying the behavior of motor vehicle drivers using eye tracking technology. Previous work has revealed strong relationships between driver eye movements and performance, which has resulted in widely accepted guidance within the transportation industry. In this work, the same eye tracking analysis methods were applied to investigate 20 professional pipefitters’ interactions with traditional isometric assembly drawings during a construction pipe model assembly task, in order to begin to understand the strategies that construction craft professionals use to gather visual information from engineering deliverables. A custom web application was developed to quantify and compare the pipefitters’ interactions with the assembly drawings through several visit metrics. Results indicated that the pipefitters’ interactions with the assembly drawings were associated with their performance and spatial cognition; however, the results did not suggest that the pipefitters were adhering to any particular visual information gathering strategies. The authors also investigated whether age or industry experience were associated with differences in visual information gathering strategies, but no significant relationships were observed. The primary contribution of this work is a demonstration of how existing eye tracking analysis methods can be applied to investigate how construction craft professionals extract visual information from engineering deliverables.
keywords:Eye tracking; construction; productivity
full text: (PDF file, 0.896 MB)
citation:Sears M, Alruwaythi O, Goodrum P M (2022). How pipefitters obtain visual information from construction assembly drawings, ITcon Vol. 27, pg. 290-311, https://doi.org/10.36680/j.itcon.2022.015
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