Correlation Analysis of Activity Durations in Tunneling Projects

Abstract

In the area of Civil Engineering and Construction it is relevant to study the correlation between durations of different activities, in order to acquire information that allows optimizing performance of work cycles, as well as improving estimates of activity durations in future works. The data analyzed in this paper comes from activity cycles of tunneling works in Line 6 of Metro de Santiago. Once the correlations were obtained, one first goal was to propose the application of a statistical hypothesis test to determinate their level of confidence. A second goal was to present a formulation that employs these correlations to estimate the duration of an activity from a previous activity duration. The results from the first objective allow to perform comparative analysis depending on soil type, excavation pace and work shift, applying a level of confidence of 80%. It is observed that negative correlations can be associated to a better efficiency of the constructive process. The results from the second objective are validated through the application of the suggested formulation based on a bivariate normal distribution.