Preparation of Constraints for Construction Simulation

The planning of construction projects depends on technological and temporal constraints, which in turn determine the relationships between construction processes. Additionally, many activities require exclusive access to certain spaces at the construction site, which often depends on the progress of construction. If these dependencies are not adequately considered during construction scheduling, they may cause conflicts at the construction site, resulting in incalculable delays and extra costs. Nowadays, discrete event simulation based on building information models (BIM) can be used to support construction scheduling. Normally, building information models do not provide all the required information needed for construction scheduling. In addition, a construction site plan and information about equipment and resources are required to provide further details. The focus of this paper is on data aggregation and the preparation of constraints for construction simulation. For an efficient construction simulation, data have to be extracted from various underlying data models and enhanced with additional process information. Data preparation and integration into simulation is done with the aid of an interactive 4D editor for construction simulation preprocessing and evaluation.