Clustered simulation for the simulation of large repetitive construction projects

Construction planning methods have been in continuous evolution due to the increasing complexity of construction projects. Construction simulation modeling is one of the later stages of this evolution that has received much attention in research. Many simulation based construction planning methods developed modeling methods that attempt to cluster project activities into smaller sub-models that enhance model reusability. Many of these modeling methods, however, create new modeling elements that are not familiar to traditional construction simulation modelers. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a method for clustering activities of large and repetitive construction projects for enhancing the reusability of those simulation models. The developed method does not create any new modeling elements and is called Clustered Simulation Modeling (CSM). CSM was evaluated in modeling an actual large-scale repetitive construction projects, and the results have illustrated the effectiveness of the method and the proposed clustering scheme.