Off-site and on-site construction scheduling: Integrated panelized construction management using pull planning
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Date
2023-03
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
In off-site construction, factory-site coordination is critically important for achieving the benefits over traditional construction, such as reduced project makespan and better resource utilization efficiency. However, current off-site construction management treats the factory schedule and site schedule separately. Additionally, off-site construction planning is done manually and ad hoc based on the manager’s empirical estimation. The lack of sound decision-making results in constant schedule changes during construction and delivery delays. This research proposes a Pull Planning framework spanning the entire construction process using a combined Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) and Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) technique. The research also proves the feasibility and benefits of Pull Planning applied to multi-project scheduling in panelized construction through comparison and analysis between two simulation models using the Push and Pull planning approaches, respectively. The simulation models are built based on real factory and site operations. The Pull planning method results in a 12.6 % reduction in all project completion time and a 80.2% reduction in panel waiting time. Thus, the Pull Planning approach optimizes scheduling decisions on multi-project off-site construction planning.