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Integrating construction and site layout planning in mechanized tunnel infrastructure projects is essential due to the mutual impacts of construction planning and site layout decisions. Simulation can incorporate site layout planning and construction planning of tunneling projects in a unified environment. However, simulation adoption by industry practitioners has remained relatively limited due to the special skills required for building and using simulation models. Therefore, this paper aims to create a simple-to-use simulation tool that supports site layout and construction operation planning of tunneling projects. This tool intends to promote the simulation application in site layout planning.

The current paper proposes simulation as a decision support tool (DST) to provide an integrated environment for modeling tunnel construction operations, site layout and capturing the mutual impacts. A special purpose simulation (SPS) tool was customized and developed for typical mechanized tunneling projects, by tunnel boring machines, to facilitate building the model and allow access to users with limited simulation knowledge.

The results show that the developed SPS tool is of great assistance to construction industry practitioners to analyze a variety of site layout and construction plan scenarios and make informed decisions based on its comprehensive and intuitive outputs.

The main contribution of this research is to promote simulation application in site layout planning of tunneling projects through the development of a simple-to-use tool, which has sufficient details for site layout planning and constraints. The developed DST enables planners to make decisions simultaneously on the site layout, other construction planning variables and identify the most efficient plan.

Construction planning for microtunneling projects is a complex process due to the high level of uncertainties inherent in underground construction and the interdependent nature of decision variables. Simulation is a suitable decision-making tool to account for uncertainties and to model complex dependencies among decision variables. This paper aims to improve microtunneling construction planning by using simulation.

This study proposes a hybrid simulation approach that combines discrete event simulation (DES) with continuous simulation (CS) for microtunneling construction planning. In this approach, DES is used to model construction processes at the activity level and CS is used to model the continuous flow of soil material in the system.

To demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach in construction planning of microtunneling projects, different construction plan scenarios are compared in a microtunneling case study. The results of the case study show suitability of the hybrid DES-CS approach in simulating microtunneling construction processes and the practicality of the approach for identifying the most efficient construction plan.

This study proposes a new modeling approach for microtunneling construction processes using hybrid simulation and provides decision support at the construction planning stage of projects.

Properly planned module installation on an industrial site is a critical factor in delivering a project safely, on time and within budget. Different sizes of heavy-duty mobile cranes are used to pick, swing and place the modules. Crane selection depends on module size and weight, as well as crane availability, location and configuration. Weeks can be spent in trial and error to prepare and improve module installation plans due to the large number of ways to install the modules on site, high crane operating costs and other crane-module constraints. A tool to automatically generate module installation plans is essential.

This paper presents a novel heuristic-based methodology for planning and sequencing module installation on industrial construction sites that takes into account proposed technological constraints.

Case studies are presented to demonstrate the ease and effectiveness of the developed methodology in planning module installations.

On a complex project, the tool can save time in preparing the installation plan, while also reducing the amount of crane supporting tasks (foundation preparation and crane movement).

The purpose of this paper is to develop a simulation model capable of capturing the complex variables impacting the productivity of tunneling construction projects.

Simulation modeling is used to construct high‐level models of construction supply networks in order to perform quantitative analysis, enabling planners to work out the embedded complexities of the system.

This study presents a detailed simulation model of a real life tunnel construction project along with its supply chain of liner segments. Using this detailed model, a sensitivity analysis for the tunneling project shows the impact of chosen variables on the duration of a tunneling project; these results are used to verify the importance of considering the whole supply chain of a construction project in the planning stage.

Effective quality control, consideration of the shortage of storage space, and anticipation of required lead time when placing the first order to achieve the full storage capacity of liners before the start of a project are some practices that can be employed by construction organizations to address supply chain issues for tunneling projects.

Research into quantifying the benefits of implementing supply chain management (SCM) is very limited: the literature for the construction industry generally discusses how SCM concepts can be adopted, or what problems and challenges inhibit such adoption without analyzing and quantifying the effects of these techniques on an actual construction project.

Pipe‐spool module assembly involves a variety of uncertain factors and constraints, which complicate the assembly scheduling process. These factors also pose a challenge for the scheduler who struggles to produce a schedule that optimizes both the use of available resources (e.g. space) and meets the project's delivery deadlines. In the relatively quick production cycle of module assembly, the scheduling process plays an operative role. Thus, automation of the process would enhance productivity of the schedule updating process. This paper seeks to address this issue.

A simulation‐based approach is presented for scheduling pipe‐spool module assembly. This approach incorporates physical and logical constraints. General purpose simulation (GPS) is used to model these logical and heuristic constraints.

The application of the proposed model to an actual case study demonstrates the significant improvement in the assembly schedule when compared to traditional CPM‐based scheduling techniques.

The proposed model allows schedulers to experiment with various rules in order to improve the scheduling process by, for example, instantly updating the schedule.