This is the End

Emalee Berry, Drew Guingrich, Molly Vodacek, Rachel Tackett & Zhiying Liu
Project 2 Milestone
CGT 411
March 11, 2016

With week nine coming to a close, we have made some considerable progress
on our project. To recap, currently crane placement calculations are done by hand
by the project superintendent and other project leaders. This can be a time
consuming process. Our plan is to create a simple, user friendly tool in Dynamo to
help project superintendents shorten the process and assist them when calculating
the size, location, and lifting capacity of tower cranes. It will focus mainly on the
range of each crane as well as the lifting capacity. Project superintendents should be
able to narrow down a few possible locations based on their knowledge and then
use our tool to assist them in making a final decision with regards to weight and
lifting capacity. Our plans for testing include a test for usability/functionality,
accuracy and time. We will provide a set of instructions to our users, made up of
fellow CGT and BCM students (test one) as well as project superintendents from
various companies including Holder Construction, Walsh Construction, Pepper
Construction and more (test one, two and three). They will follow the instructions for
each test and answer a corresponding survey about their experiences with our
crane placement tool.
Previously, we were still deciding about which method to use for the time
test. Method one involved splitting the superintendents into two groups. The first
group would perform traditional calculations of lift capabilities given the weight of
structural components and distance from the crane and the other group would use
our Dynamo tool to help with these calculations. Method two involved placing all
superintendents into the same group and having them all use the Dynamo
simulation to place the crane based on weight/location of structural elements on the
jobsite and then estimate how long it would have taken them to do it traditionally.
Given the fact that these project superintendents are busy professionals, we have
decided to use method two since it will be less time consuming. We greatly

appreciate their willingness to participate in our testing and did not want our
methods to require too much of their time.
Last week we sent out a list of questions to various project superintendents
regarding what currently goes into tower crane placement on a jobsite. We asked
about the various factors, order of importance of these factors, maximum capacity
for critical lifts as well as any suggestions or things we are leaving out of our
program. So far we have received responses from Holder Construction, Pepper
Construction and Ryan Companies. Its seems that as we thought, currently crane
placement relies heavily on past experience. There are numerous factors that go
into crane placement including but not limited to the height of the building and
those surrounding it, required reach, jib lengths, maximum weight, size of crane
pad, site logistics, and crane set up and teardown area. It seems that none of these
factors are necessarily more important than others since they all work in tandem
and are significant when deciding where to place the tower crane. The answers we
received regarding critical lifts were consistent with our research 85 percent is a
common safety factor for tower cranes and any lift that is at or above 75 percent
capacity is considered a critical lift. A new piece of information that we found is that
not only would project superintendents benefit from using this tool, but so would
project estimators and the preconstruction department. It was said that this tool
would be even more helpful if it had a simple interface and was easy to play with
and run multiple scenarios. This just further reinforces and confirms our decision to
use Dynamo for this tool since it is very user friendly. It was also suggested to add a
print function to share the results, add a save button to save previous projects and
in addition to generic preloaded cranes to include an input function for cranes. One
final recommendation was to make sure to take into account not only the height of
the building but also those surrounding it. For this reason, we have decided that if
we do have time to include another factor in addition to weight of materials, jib

length, and reach and lift capabilities - it will be height. Overall, these answers have
just helped support our previous research regarding crane placement and possible
programs/software to use for this tool.
We also completed our three survey questionnaires for our testing. For the
usability test, both students and superintendents will follow a set of instructions to
load a project in Dynamo. They will then move the tower crane to different locations
and try to run though the program and see the results. After they finish the tutorial,
we will ask them to answer the following rate/questions:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

I am proficient with using Autodesk Revit software.

The instructions provided were clear and easy to understand.
Loading the steel into Dynamo was simple and intuitive.
Moving the tower crane to different locations was an easy task.
The color coded outputs for the steel were easy to understand.
By the end of this tutorial, I felt comfortable using this Dynamo tool.
Was there anything that was difficult to understand? If so, what and why?
Is there anything you would change/do you have any suggestions?

Numbers one through six are Likert scale statements. For these, users will rate
whether they agree with each statement. One refers to strongly disagree and ten
refers to strongly agree. The first statement is designed to make sure our users are
familiar with Revit. The second to sixth statements refer to the tutorial of our
program. We hope after the tutorial the superintendents are able to use our
program to complete the second and third tests. We also want to make sure our
program is easy to use. The last two questions are open ended questions. We want
to know if there is anything that is difficult to understand from the program and also
ask for some suggestions.
As previously stated, test two will be for accuracy. This test will be designed
for project superintendents only. The idea is to test our program with previous
projects that they have worked on. We will instruct them to place a similar crane in
the same location it was placed on the site and run the program. They should get

roughly the same result that they got on the jobsite. We will then ask them to
answer a few questions about the process. The questions are as follows:

1. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being least accurate, 10 being most accurate), how

accurate did you feel this simulation was?

2. I feel that this Dynamo tool would help to make more informed decisions on
3.
4.
5.
6.

future projects.
How useful was the tutorial in preparing you to use this tool on a previous
project?
How similar was the provided crane to the crane actually used on the project?
How did our simulation results compare to your pre-construction
expectations?
Do you think this tool would have helped you evaluate all the options for
crane location?

The first question refers to the accuracy of our program. If low numbers are
received for this question, we understand that more work will be required to
increase the programs accuracy. The second is a Likert Scale statement. In the first
survey, we felt that these statements were more appropriate but not as much in the
following surveys. The remaining questions are open ended. Question three relates
back to the first test to ensure that our program instructions were helpful. The next
two questions relate to factors that could reduce the accuracy of the program, such
as crane type and calculated results. The last question previews our next test. We
wanted users to start thinking about using this program for crane placement for a
new project.
Part three of the survey will cover the final part of our testing procedure. In
test three, superintendents were asked to estimate how long it would take to
calculate crane placement solely based on weight and distance of surrounding steel.
Keeping lift capacity and range in mind, superintendents will then use the Dynamo
tool to determine which job location is most suitable to complete all the lifts. The
survey will assess users Dynamo experience relative to time. We were able to come
up with a variety of questions that would help us analyze their experience. They are
as follows:

1. How confident were you with your time estimation for traditional lift
calculations based on weight/distance from the crane?

2. This program helped make a more informed decision about the tower crane
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

placement.
I would use this program in the future to help make decisions about tower
crane placement.
What was your time estimation for traditional methods of calculating whether
or not steel can be lifted based on weight/distance from the crane?
How long did it take you to ultimately decide where to place the crane using
the tool in Dynamo?
What do you think was beneficial about our crane placement tool?
How was your overall experience with using the tower crane placement tool?
If we were to expand on this program, what additional elements would you
want added?

Numbers one through three will be presented in the Likert scale form. We are
interested in the individuals level of satisfaction with our provided tool. The
majority of the questions in this part of the survey are open ended. Since there are
a lot of factors that go in to the placement of tower cranes, we thought that it was
necessary to allow superintendents to expand on their thoughts of the program in
depth. Ideally, using the Dynamo tool will decrease the amount of time it would take
superintendents to traditionally calculate crane placement based on weight
capacity and distance.
Once all of these surveys are completed, we plan to go through and analyze
the results. For the Likert scale statements, we plan to calculate the average rating
for each statement. This will be relatively easy to evaluate since we will have an
exact average score for all of the responses. With regards to the open ended
questions, we will read all of the responses and analyze the results through use of
thematic analysis. We will look for recurring patterns and themes throughout the
responses to evaluate the overall acceptance of our crane placement tool and
whether or not users thought it was helpful.

The program itself has made some significant progress in the weeks since the
first milestone. We found that doing all of the coding within Dynamo is going to be
too strenuous on the machine and load it down too much. We have decided to code
all of the individual tower crane logic using Python. We have three separate cranes
done with up to six different jib lengths per crane. One thing we had to overcome
was learning how Python works. Break and switch cases do not exist in Python and
that was our original idea for how to compare our distance and mass ranges. We
ended up using if, elif, and else to compare our number ranges. A safety factor has
been included so that the crane can be limited to only 75% of its capacity. Any lifts
that are in the last 10% of the allowable limit will be colored yellow.
As of right now we are still working on a way to import the mass and
calculate the distance from the tower crane the steel members are located. This
will be exported from Revit as an array that will include: beam number, mass, and
the distance out on the boom. This array will then be tested by the tower crane
script and then the output will be a color indicator of whether or not the steel can be
picked up. The colors that will be included in our graphical scale are green, yellow,
and red.
Our plan for the remaining four weeks following spring break is to ensure that
our program is ready for testing. We plan to do internal testing with several different
projects of varying sizes before we release testing to our test groups. We will then
test with fellow CGT and BCM students in KNOY and send our Dynamo file to project
superintendents for them to test with their projects. Once testing is completed and
we have received our survey results, we will analyze the data as described above
make any necessary changes to our program before our final presentation on April
21.