2006 Awards for Excellence
The following article was selected for this year’s Outstanding Paper Award for Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management
‘‘Consideration of break in modeling of construction processes’’
Hong ZhangC.M. TamCity University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Purpose – This paper proposes introducing how to consider the break which cyclically happens and has nothing to do with resource availabilities in modeling of a construction process through anactivity-based simulation.Design/methodology/approach– In consideration of the variable break-frequency and break-duration for different activities, concepts of time-cycle and time-window are discussed. Then an algorithm todetermine the execution of the activities facing the cyclical break is proposed, in which pre-emption or non-‘‘pre-’’emption cases and overtime are taken into account together. This algorithm is incorporatedinto an activity-based simulation so that the improved construction simulation is able to consider the cyclical break and model the construction process more reasonably. Computational analyses arepresented to address the effectiveness of the improved activity-based simulation.Findings – The computational analyses demonstrate that the improved activity-based simulation can consider the cyclical break in modeling a construction process, which cannot be achieved by thetraditional simulation tools, especially when non-pre-emptive activities are concerned. It is also shown that the overtime use for the non-pre-emptive activities can lead to reduction of the project durationwhen the cyclical break is considered.Originality/value – The proposed simulation-based methodology is an alternative means to deal with the cyclical break that is destined for some activities and irrelevant to resource availabilities inmodeling of a construction process.Keywords:Construction systems, Modelling, Simulation, Time studywww.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/09699980510608820
ECAMVolume 12 Number 4, 2005, pp. 373-90Editor: Ronald McCafferwww.emeraldinsight.com/authors
