IoT sensor-based BIM system for smart safety barriers of hazardous energy in petrochemical construction

The accidental release of hazardous energy is one of the causes of construction site accidents. This risk is considerably increased during petrochemical plant construction because the project itself is complex in terms of process, equipment, and environment. In addition, a general construction safety barrier hardly isolates and controls site hazardous energy effectively. Thus, this study proposes an Internet of Things (IoT) sensor-based building information modeling (BIM) system, which can be regarded as a new smart barrier design method for hazardous energy in petrochemical construction. In this system, BIM is used to support the identification of on-site hazardous energy, whereas IoT is used to collect the location of on-site personnel in real time. A hazardous energy isolation rule is defined to enable the system to generate a smart barrier on the web terminal window, thereby ensuring the safety of on-site person. This system has been applied to a large-scale construction project in Sinopec for one year and accumulated substantial practical data, which supported the idea about the application of sensor and BIM technology in construction. The related effects of the system on hazardous energy management are also presented in this work.