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Spring 2015

Newstead, Sean A

The Construction Industry Institute (CII) has a best practice under the heading “Front End Planning” (1995) that is meant to ensure that projects are as complete, as optimized, and as certain as possible throughout the project life cycle. In order to demonstrate this, the Project Definition Rating

Index (PDRI) was optimized to suit underground drainage tunnel construction. The rating index has been successfully used for 2 of 3 key area workshops to demonstrate the usefulness of this tool to both the case study and the construction industry. A special purpose simulation template was created for

use in the simulation environment Simphony, specifically for underground drainage tunnel construction. This proved to be extremely helpful in the front end planning of the case construction project to confirm alternate construction alignments, construction methods, and what type of shifts and crews

Spring 2017

Alwisy, Aladdin

The fast-paced progress associated with offsite construction projects necessitates special attention toward project design, estimation, and planning. Traditionally, the relationship between project design and cost lacks clarity during the early design stages of a project. While design efforts aim

to improve the project performance, compromises are made in order to meet a desired targeted cost. Target cost modelling (TCMd) provides an ideal environment to explore the available alternatives and reveal the associated financial and environmental impact on the project. Structural design, building

envelope, heating and cooling systems, delivery of modular units, and onsite assembly are analyzed and standardized through a set of construction, costing, and energy factors in order to illustrate their indirect/direct effect on the project design, cost, and energy efficiency. This research presents a

Spring 2012

Hong, Jangmi

a special purpose simulation tool called ISP (integrated simulation-based planning). The ISP’s main framework is a simulation-based network analysis based on a precedence diagram method. The ISP tool application has been demonstrated with a hypothetical road construction project. The approach is

Cost and schedule integration can improve efficiencies in construction planning and control since they are key constraints in project delivery and closely related. This research provides a framework for cost and schedule integration, and transforms the model to simulation-based planning in which

the uncertainties of project cost and schedule are evaluated through computer simulation. This has been achieved through explicitly incorporating risk, resource, and detailed operation into a work-packaging model. The developed framework has been implemented in the Simphony.Net modeling environment as

Fall 2016

Liu, Jiongyang

as a “big site”. Though this expansion does not fundamentally change the basic processes in industrial modularization projects, it presents more challenges in project planning. Previous research efforts either focused on the material delivery process or the module assembly process alone, while the

integration of both for evaluating the impact of logistics performances upon modular construction planning has yet to be addressed. Thus, a special logistics simulation template is developed based on the Simphony platform to facilitate the simulation modeling of module fabrication, transportation, assembly

Fall 2022

Shuvo,Badhon Das

Fabrication operations produce made-to-order structural components (such steel elements or precast concrete) for multiple construction projects, which require crews to repeat their work at a number of workstations or locations in a special manufacturing facility. Scheduling these interdependent

techniques have been developed to facilitate modelling and analysis. However, these existing scheduling approaches fail to address the extensive resource links among projects, thereby negatively impacting the stability and feasibility of resultant project schedules and increasing management difficulties in

different stages of the project. Hence, the workface operation realities often deviate away from the actual planning bringing down the overall productivity. Unless the changes and variations (e.g., material logistics) during operations can be sufficiently and cost-effectively reflected in the planning, the

Spring 2015

Zhou, Xiang Yu

In the current construction industry, simulation is an effective technology that can assist engineers’ decision making on project planning and estimation. The key contribution of simulation is to model uncertainty and risk occurrence during the construction process; however, this method still lacks

a quantitative method to determine how much risk the decision maker is willing to accept. This thesis aims to develop an approach that can assist decision making on what percentile from a cumulative distribution function (CDF) of project cost reflects the organization’s risk appetite and overall

acceptance of risk. In order to enhance this quantitative risk analysis, a special purpose template was re-developed in Simphony.Net, based on program evaluation and review technique (PERT). This template provides an integrated cost/schedule model, and transforms the model to simulation-based planning, in

Spring 2011

Pan, Wenjia

Construction contributes significantly to gas emissions. Diverse efforts have been undertaken to mitigate the effects of these emissions; however, there currently is no effective tool to estimate small-scale (e.g., project-based) emissions in construction. Discrete-event simulation (DES), a new

approach, may be able to rectify this lack. This research has built a DES-based emission template using Simphony, a special purpose simulation (SPS) environment developed at the University of Alberta. This template permits inexperienced simulators to build simulation models that can estimate emissions of a

construction project. Two case studies are used to showcase the modeling process and to demonstrate how valuable information concerning sustainability can be obtained through this method. In addition, this research introduces an emission federate in a high-level architecture (HLA) simulation environment that

Fall 2016

Razavialavi, Seyedreza

) promote application of simulation in site layout planning of tunnelling projects by developing a special-purpose simulation tool, (4) simultaneously optimize site layout variables and construction planning variables by developing an integrated GA-simulation framework, and (5) optimize site layout planning

Site layout planning, which involves identifying sizes and locations of temporary facilities, can have significant impacts on the safety, cost, time, and productivity of projects. Despite considerable research undertaken to improve efficiency of planning construction site layouts, most models

developed for this purpose have overlooked the impact of facility size on project cost and cannot thoroughly model the dual impact of site layout variables (i.e., facility size and location) and construction plan variables (e.g., production rate, resources, and material delivery). In this research, given

Fall 2016

Rabiei, Montazar

installation. These adoptions are often made without making proper adjustments, leading to inaccurate pipe designs. This dissertation aims to identify and address the shortcomings that exist in current pullback determination methods during pipe installation by HDD. Throughout the study, special attention is

Technologies (CETT) at the University of Alberta, and collected on different project sites for crossings executed in Alberta, Canada. The new proposed models have been able to simulate the recorded pullback forces, while the PRCI method failed to do so. It has been observed that the fluidic drag changes

Fall 2023

Bani, Moad A

design standard, CSA S16-19. Special design requirements were introduced for MT-BRBFs in the 2016 edition of AISC Seismic Provisions in the U.S. to improve column stability response and control tier drift demands. However, very limited supporting research data is available to verify these requirements

potential improvements, and develop an enhanced design method in the framework of CSA S16. This M.Sc. research project aims to evaluate the seismic response of steel MT-BRBFs designed to the Canadian and U.S. provisions and propose enhanced analysis and design methods to better represent MT-BRBF seismic