Hu, D; Mohamed, Y; Taghaddos, H and Hermann, U (2018) A simulation-based method for effective workface planning of industrial construction projects. Construction Management and Economics, 36(6), pp. 328-347. ISSN 01446193
Abstract
The generation of well-defined and moderately sized field installation work packages for the construction workforce, referred to as workface planning, has been recently employed to plan large-scale industrial construction projects under tight schedules. However, traditional CPM-based scheduling of several thousand work packages (e.g. 5000 activities multiply by 10 work packages per activity on average) is a tedious, error prone process. Defining proper logics and controlling congestion among work packages crossing several work areas, and also effective resource allocation over time are other major challenges in workface planning. This paper presents a novel simulation-based framework to implement workface planning for large-scale industrial construction projects. This framework proposes a time-stepped discrete event simulation-based modelling for dynamic resource allocation based on congestion and other constraints on the job site. The proposed method is demonstrated and tested against traditional CPM-based solutions based on an actual case study.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | discrete event simulation; resource constraints; schedule; site congestion; workface planning |
| Index terms: | industrial construction, site congestion, resource constraint, scheduling, package, resource allocation, modelling, discrete event simulation, case study |
| Subjects: | analytical methods, modelling and simulation, site logistics, contractual arrangements, operations management, data collection methods, operations research, resource management, building construction |
| Topics: | Engineering Principles, Time Control, Procurement, Research Practice, Project Management, Site Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
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