Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference R. Scherer, A. Ismail. 1 PROCESS-BASED SIMULATION LIBRARY FOR CONSTRUCTION PROJECT PLANNING Raimar Scherer Ali Ismail Dresden University of Technology Dresden University of Technology Helmholtzstr. 10 Helmholtzstr. 10 01069 Dresden, Germany 01069 Dresden, Germany ABSTRACT This paper presents a process-based discrete-event simulation library for construction project planning. Business process models are used to build an accumulative knowledge base for standard construction processes in form of a ready to use process templates. The library aims to reduce the time and efforts needed to create simulation models for a construction project throughout its lifecycle by integrating process models with simulation models and provide a set of reusable simulation components. The paper presents the concepts and describes the architecture of the system with briefly review of its features. 1 INTRODUCTION Construction simulation has been successful in academic research with limited successful applications in industry (AbouRizk 1995, Kamat and Martinez 2001). Simulation as a planning technique for con- struction projects has not been widely adopted within the construction industry for many reasons, (1) lack of simplicity compared to tradition planning methods, (2) time, cost, and skills required to build and ana- lyze simulation models (Lucko et al. 2008). Though this fact, it has been also recognized that the con- struction industry is progressively investing in the adoption of IT tools. In the academic research area many principles and simulation environment have been developed since the first efforts by D.W. Halpin in 1977 by introducing CYCLONE as modeling method for construction op- erations (Halpin 1977). Most applied methodologies based on Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) method and were adopting as Special Purpose Simulation (SPS) targeting a special kind of construction projects like earth moving (Hajjar and AbouRizk 1996), road construction projects (Castro and Dawood 2004), or as generic simulation models, for example by integrating a constraint solver within a DES environment (König et. 2007). Most simulation systems provided the end user with the possibility to create new con- struction process templates graphically or in a form of process pattern in tables to describe the logic of tasks sequence inside a single process or to get a hierarchical process models. However most systems failed to simulate large-scale industrial construction having shortcomings due lack of standardization, computing ability, and simulation re-use (Wang et al. 2005). The goal of this ongoing research is to develop dynamic simulation models rapidly to be used as sup- port tools to evaluate scheduling and resource planning alternatives and improve resource utilization rates in order to minimize the total project duration/cost. The presented simulation system offers many features to minimize efforts to create simulation models and validate the simulation results: • Using formal business process models to capture and organize the knowledge in construction domain and providing the ability to transform those models directly into a simulation process li- brary. This knowledge will be shared and ready to use for all simulation models.