Automated productivity-based schedule animation: Simulation-based approach to time-cost trade-off analysis

Many studies of construction labor productivity are at a macro level. These macrolevel studies attempt to quantify the productivity or changes in productivity over the entire industry or a segment of the industry. This study is aimed at a micro or project level examination of productivity. The tool developed allows a company to predict, manage, and even optimize the productivity associated with a project or levels of projects. Automated productivity-based schedule animation (APBSA) is a dynamic scheduling methodology that stochastically utilizes weekly trended construction labor productivity data in order to automatically update the baseline schedule that was created at the beginning of the project by the construction manager. APBSA reports the construction activity duration variances and animates the progress of the job with most current data available in a four-dimensional (4D) environment. Contractors can improve their planning by utilizing APBSA with building information modeling (BIM) which will help them to improve their craft productivity. As a case study, a three-story Systems Engineering Facility III of Hanscom Air Force Base (AFB) was modeled. The model was developed in order to demonstrate the impacts of time and cost-based stochastic productivity indices on the baseline schedule. A time-cost trade-off analysis was also performed in order to show effects of duration variations on the cost of the project.