Analysis of Workflow Variability and Its Impacts on Productivity and Performance in Construction of Multistory Buildings

Abstract

The meeting of milestones presents a constant challenge in construction projects. One root cause behind this challenge is the presence of variability in the project workflow. In fact, impacts of variability at both trade contractor level and project level remain difficult to manage. This paper aims to analyze impacts of variability in the workflow caused by rework and fluctuating work quantities.Towards this end, production data of two residential construction projects were collected and a mixed method of mathematical and simulation modeling was used in order to analyze performance and productivity at both trade and project levels. Performance metrics such as completion times, work-inprocess levels and delays were then measured in different real-life production scenarios. The findings clearly show that the workflow variability significantly downgrades performance metrics by inflated completion times, longer queues of uncompleted jobs and excessive delays, resulting in the productivity loss. This work contributed to the body of knowledge in engineering management by enhancing the insight into workflow variability and its impacts on tangible performance measures.The results clearly show that productivity and performance in the construction production can be improved by stabilizing the workflow in the interconnected network of trade contractors.

Autonomous production tracking for augmenting output in off-site construction

“…However, these studies have not focused on where planning and control meet processes. A customized shop floor control methodology for off-site production (OSP) is required to effectively manage the production flow [22,61]. Hence, the presented paper describes a tailored methodology for production tracking and control in off-site construction.…”

Process Versus Operations Workflow – Making the Case for Continuous Monitoring of Construction Operations

“…Such project management focus fails to acknowledge other constraints with a likely impact on the flow of work (Koskela 2000). Indeed, multiple efforts have quantified the negative impact of workflow variability on craft labor productivity and project performance measures (Thomas 2000;Hamzeh 2009;Brodetskaia 2013;Seppänen 2009;Liu et al 2011;Abbaszadegan and Grau 2015;Arashpour and Arashpour 2015).…”

Hybrid Simulation Modeling of Hoist Down-Peak Operations in Construction Sites

“…To construct the model , the Anylogic simulation tool (education version) is used to incorporate the discrete-event process flows chart with the agent based state chart. It is said that AnyLogic is the only simulation tool that supports all the most common situation methodologies in place today: system dynamics, process-centric, and agent based modeling [11][12][13]. The discrete-event process flow chart is put in the main agent of AnyLogic with a hoist agent collection named hoists.…”