Agent-based Simulation of construction workflow

Dr. Ling Ma

Research question?

To what extend is uncertainty concerning process status a cause of waste in construction workflow

Workflow exploration via simulation

Lola Ben-Alon, MSc, “Simulating and Visualizing the Flow of Trade Crews using Agents and Building Information Models (BIM)”, Civil and Env. Eng., Technion. 2015

© Dr. Ling Ma

© 2015, Dr. Ling Ma 

1. How to model construction activities parametrically?
2. How to model the variability and uncertainty in the emergent construction workflow?
3. How to model different scenarios of information flow on a construction site?
4. How to quantify construction waste and measure the workflow performance?

A new modularized simulation design 

Shahaf, Y., Sacks, R., Ma, L., The Impact of Process Information Flow on Trade Crews' Workflow, Part I: Serious Game Simulation. ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, in preparation.

Ma, L., Sacks, R., Shahaf, Y., The Impact of Process Information Flow on Trade Crews' Workflow, Part II: Agent–Based Simulation. ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, in preparation.

Relational model based simulation design 

Ma, L. and Sacks, R. (2016). ‘Agent-based simulation of construction workflows using a relational data model’ Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, Pasquire, C., Alves, T., and Reginato, J., (eds.), Boston, MA, US, July 2016, pp. 73-82.  

© Dr. Ling Ma

Simulation explaination

© Dr. Ling Ma

Simulation explaination

© Dr. Ling Ma

Result (no information exchange)

© Dr. Ling Ma

© 2015, Dr. Ling Ma 

Result (no information exchange)

© 2015, Dr. Ling Ma 

Result (no information exchange)

© 2015, Dr. Ling Ma 

Result (information flow vs work flow)

© Dr. Ling Ma

Future Research

Optimized task selection strategy in daily plan