Journal of Applied Science and Engineering

Published by Tamkang University Press

1.30

Impact Factor

1.60

CiteScore

Ming-Hsiu Tsai This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.1, Sian-Ren Huang This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.2

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Tamkang University, No.151, Yingzhuan Rd., Danshui Dist., New Taipei City, ROC.


 

Received: September 5, 2018
Accepted: May 7, 2019
Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.6180/jase.202003_23(1).0010  

ABSTRACT


A larger construction project requires the involvement of more professionals in the project team. The efficiency of collaborative interactions among heterogeneous professionals during construction is critical to project success. A social-network-based simulation tool can assist project managers in experimenting and analyzing the efficiency of project teams. Accordingly, this study adopted the social network philosophy to create a team member interaction mechanism and applied the agent-based modeling and simulation approach to develop an agent-based project team collaborative efficiency simulation (PTCES) model for estimating the collaborative efficiency of project teams. In the PTCES model, agents with their collaborative network can execute assigned activities collaboratively so that the team efficiency can be estimated by the simulation manner. An actual building construction case was examined experimentally to calibrate and validate the proposed model, and the results proved the quantitative ability of the PTCES model in estimating team efficiency under different circumstances. The case simulation results also indicated the importance of developing a collaborative culture and reducing the reworking risk for improving the project efficiency. Moreover, a higher collaborative network density was determined to engender higher project efficiency and shorter project duration; however, the impact converged with increasing network density. The proposed model contributes to favorably observing the effect of social network aspects of project management and to efficiently estimating the efficiency and duration of construction projects.


Keywords: collaboration, project management, agent-based modeling and simulation, social network, construction process simulation



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