Automation and optimization in crane lift planning: a critical review

Safe and efficient crane operations play a significant role in successful delivery of construction projects, and thus meticulous planning of crane lifts becomes increasingly critical. Crane lift planning involves a series of complex decisions to be made, while satisfying a wide range of criteria and constraints. Conventionally, making these decisions is time-consuming and to a large extent relies on the planner's experience. To make more informed and optimized planning decisions, past research works investigated various automated planning techniques and optimization algorithms. However, most studies focus on an individual planning decision or a particular lifting scenario, which makes the findings hard to be generalized. Thus, the knowledge in lift planning is rather fragmented and the state-of-the-art in lift planning is not explicitly presented. This study, therefore, aims to conduct a critical review and assessment on the literature on crane lift planning automation and optimization and to establish a solid foundation to inform future research. It first presents an overview of the literature in crane lift planning with respect to the planning decision and the type of cranes the studies focus on. Secondly, for each lift planning decision, the assumptions, objectives, decision variables, and constraints are formulated based on the literature and analyzed from the perspectives of problem formulation coherence. Furthermore, each problem-solving method is evaluated with regard to a tri-axial evaluation diagram to allow an in-depth discussion on the efficacy and practicality of planning results. Finally, based on the discussion and existing literature, a BIM-based lift planning framework is presented and future research directions are recommended to further improve the effectiveness and efficiency of lift planning practice.