Summary for CIFE Seed Proposals for Academic Year 2015-16
Proposal number: Proposal title: Generating a simulation model from project data through DSM
Principal investigator(s)
and department(s): Martin Fischer, CEE
Research staff: Jaakko Kujala, University of Oulu, Marc Ramsey, CIFE, and a
research assistant
Total funds requested: $38,686 Project URL for
continuation proposals http://
Project objectives
addressed by proposal Buildable, Sustainable
Expected time horizon 2-5 years
Type of innovation Incremental
Abstract
(up to 150 words) The project management paradigm is rapidly changing from a
planning and control-oriented approach towards more flexible
project design and implementation approaches, such as lean
construction, integrated project delivery and agile project
management. The new approaches create challenges for
management in terms of getting up-to-date information that could
be used to simulate and forecast project progress. Management
also needs better tools to re-design work processes and
organizational arrangements to mitigate negative effects of
changes. In this project we will examine how to generate an
equivalent VDT/Power-like organization model from a design
structure (DSM) representation of a project; create specifications
for DSM input data and interface to import data to the simulation
model. Detailed functional and technical requirements for
DSM/simulation tool integration will be created and tested using
real life information from complex construction projects.
Engineering or Business Problem
Traditional project management assumes that events affecting the project are predictable and that
the tools and activities are well understood. The strengths of this approach include laying out the
steps for development and stressing the importance of requirements. The limitations consist of
projects rarely following the sequential flow, and clients and other stakeholders usually find it
difficult to completely state all requirements early in the project. As a result, the project
management paradigm is rapidly changing from a planning and control-oriented approach,
towards more flexible project design and implementation approaches. These approaches include
lean construction, agile project development and integrated project delivery (IPD). These project
management methodologies tie the owner and other stakeholders together from the project’s
early stages into joint value co-creation processes, focus on end-user value by enabling them to
participate in the development process, and embrace continuous changes.
However, in practice, many agile and flexible project implementations fail to achieve the desired
cost, schedule, and/or sustainability goals. Agile project management approaches require
changes in how projects are contracted and negotiated in a multi-stakeholder set-up, how the
implementation is organized, and how communication practices and channels are selected and
used between organizations. The increased project complexity brought about by these changes
cannot be adequately managed with existing project management tools.
A change from a planning-oriented approach to agile project management emphasizes the
importance of project management being able to continuously analyze the impact of design
changes and to respond to unexpected events that arise during the project implementation
process. There is a need for better tools that can be used to model complex projects during
different phases of the project lifecycle, to track project progress, and to design high-performing
organizational set-ups and work processes. The managerial challenge and proposed solution
utilizing design structure matrix (DSM) integrated with simulation software is presented in
Figure 1.
Any project consists of the product that is designed and built, the organizational actors that carry
out the work, and the processes and activities that are carried out. Today’s representations of
project information focus on one of these main project elements: BIM represents the product,
organization charts represent the organization, and schedules represent the processes. Since a
project’s production, organization, and process are inextricably linked these single-focused
representations leave it up to project managers to see the main connections and consider them as
they structure and prioritize the work of their project team. For example, who should be invited
to an Integrated Concurrent Engineering session about selecting the best window for a project?
Should the structural engineer be invited? Among other aspects, this depends on how the team
thinks about constructing the facade and how large the range of choices is. If the schedule or
other constraints require off-site fabrication of the facade elements with the windows already
installed, a structural engineer may be critical at the meeting. Or, if the range of windows
considered is large the impact on daylighting and energy performance of the building will be
high, which in turn will affect the space needed for the building’s mechanical, electrical, and
piping systems, which will likely affect the type and layout of the structural system and the size
of its components. Similar interdependencies exist for other types of projects, such as
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infrastructure projects, e.g., the selection of the diameter of a tunnel. Note that the relationships
between the product across different disciplines (window size, floor to floor height) and the
product and the process (off-site fabrication) determine who on the team needs to be involved in
shaping a good solution.
Figure 1: Integrating simulation with project management and decision making systems.
Early CIFE research built representations and tools for combining two of the three main project
elements: The Virtual Design Team project combines organization and process. It simulates how
an organization carries out a process to reveal organizational bottlenecks. 4D modeling combines
product and process. It simulates how construction work unfolds over time to reveal spatial
constraints. We propose to extend the underlying representation of these tools through a fuller
exploration of how to leverage product-organization-process relationships in support of agile
project management for construction.
Theoretical and Practical Points of Departure A variety of new project management methodologies such as lean construction integrated project
delivery, alliance model, and agile project management are beginning to be applied in the
construction industry to address the challenges with traditional project management methods.
The project will build on practical experience from industry as well as research work done with
lean construction and related flexible management approaches in CIFE. The research is also
closely related to ongoing research activities in the Project Business Research group at the
University of Oulu, Finland. In the following we briefly describe relevant theoretical concepts
and work done in CIFE with simulation models.
Lean construction and related project management approaches
The new flexible project development and implementation approaches emerged in different
fields of applied research and practice. The construction industry’s poor productivity due to the
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sub-optimization of different organizations has led to the development of new approaches such
as lean construction, integrated project delivery, and alliance models. In parallel, IT project
deliveries were suffering from financial and schedule failures, and the software community
started to question the traditional project management paradigm that assumed that it would be
possible to accurately specify a software projects’ requirements and estimating the time it would
take to meet them. As a result the practice-driven Agile Manifesto (2001) was declared focusing
on coupling and integration of different stakeholders (particularly developer, business people,
and user teams), delivering valuable, functional software early and continuously, focusing on
face-to-face communications, building motivated self-organizing teams, and relying on
continuous improvement. These project management methodologies share many features: they
tie owner and other stakeholders from a project’s early stages into joint value co-creation
processes, focus on end-user value by enabling them to participate in the development process,
embrace continuous change, and apply novel contract forms. An important element in supporting
the implementation of these new methodologies is the use of online digital models, such as BIM,
which offer new possibilities for integrating a multitude of stakeholder in the joint development
of complex services and products. These new approaches are nowadays applied widely in many
construction sectors, and they change how projects are managed.
Design structure matrix
Design structure matrix (DSM) is a modeling tool that can be used to design, develop, and
manage complex systems such as construction projects. It offers functionalities that represent the
elements of a system and their interactions, thus highlighting system’s design structure. A design
structure matrix lists all constituent subsystems/activities and the corresponding information
exchange, interactions, iterations, and dependency patterns. For example, where the matrix
elements represent activities, the matrix details what pieces of information are needed to start a
particular activity, and shows what new work is enable by the information generated by that
activity. In this way, one can quickly recognize which other activities are reliant upon
information outputs generated by each activity. DSM analysis can help teams to streamline their
processes based on the optimal flow of information between different interdependent activities. It
can also be used to manage the effects of change. For example, if the specification for a
component had to be changed, it would be possible to quickly identify all processes or activities
that were dependent on that specification, reducing the risk of work continuing based on out-ofdate information. This analysis can be supported by integrating DSM with a simulation model to
further analyze the effect of changes on project objectives and to re-design work processes and
organizational arrangements to mitigate the negative effect of those changes.
Virtual design team and POWer
The Virtual Design Team (VDT) research group was initiated at CIFE during the late 1980s to
help managers design organizations and work processes for executing fast-track development of
complex products without incurring the large cost overruns and catastrophic quality failures that
had frequently plagued such efforts. VDT was developed as an agent-based computational model
of project teams and the work processes they were attempting to execute in a highly concurrent
manner. It has been successfully used to model work activities, communications, and exception
handling within traditional organizations working on projects in areas such as construction,
aerospace, consumer product development, and healthcare. A commercialized version of a VDT
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simulation tool, called SimVision, includes support for interactions between multiple concurrent
projects. POWer is a follow-on development of the VDT simulation tool. It implements
extensible actor and task models, and has been used to support research in such areas as
knowledge networks, cross-cultural organizations, and actor skill growth/decay.
Research Methods and Work Plan The overall goal for this research is to develop a simulation tool that can support the design of
effective organizational setups, as well being used during the project implementation phase to
assist in the management. The more specific objective for this project is to examine whether an
organization simulation engine working from a hybrid design structure matrix (DSM)
representation can be used effectively in the design and management of large and complex
construction projects. We will place particular emphasis on projects that apply lean construction
methods in both project design and implementation phases. Areas to be considered include initial
design of project scheduling, contractual arrangements, organizational set-ups, communication
processes, along with project forecasting and rescheduling.
The following research questions guide our research process:
-­ What are effective models of organizing in agile/lean multi-stakeholder construction
projects, and how should they be adjusted to fit different types of projects?
-­ What project design and progress parameters must be added to a DSM representation to
support VDT simulation and forecasting?
The current research version of the VDT/Power simulation software will be used as a starting
point for this work. The software will be extended to include features that are relevant for
simulating multi-stakeholder agile/lean construction projects, as well as adding methods to
automatically import design and project progress information to the simulation engine.
The work plan is divided into two parts: (1) general development of the simulation tool, and (2)
integration of the DSM representation with the simulation model. By separating these two tasks
we want to ensure that there is a long-term development roadmap for simulation tools, thus
enabling systematic development of the software. Part of this work will be done outside the scope
of this project through the ongoing collaboration between the University of Oulu and CIFE. In
this project we will specifically target those functional requirements that arise from integration of
DSM as the primary project model.
1) General design and development of simulation software
-­ Define the functional requirements for VDT/Power type of simulation software based on
literature on lean construction,
-­ Create a roadmap for the development of a simulation model to meet these functional
requirements drawing from over 20 years of experience with the development of
VDT/Power simulation software and new software tools
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2) Integration of design structure matrix (DSM) with the simulation model
-­ Determine how product, process, and people/organization-based DSM representations
can be integrated in a single project model based on existing literature on DSM
-­ Acquire sanitized existing DSM models and interpret them in the context of lean/agile
project management
-­ Examine how to generate an equivalent VDT-like organization model from a DSM
representation of a project; create a specification for DSM input data and interface to
import data to simulation model
-­ Demonstrate simulation of a resulting organization model and work with industry
partners to test resulting tool on a new construction project
Expected Results: Findings, Contributions, and Impact on Practice
One result of this project will be the development of an extended simulation tool based on the
existing POWer simulator. This is intended to provide a practical tool for assisting project
managers in both the design and implementation of complex multi-firm projects. These projects
will be applying new project management methods, such as lean construction, integrated project
delivery, and agile project management.
In the development of a simulation software and integration with project data the main emphasis
is placed on creating DSM/simulation tool integration. The feature will be developed and tested
using real work data from historical and ongoing construction projects.
This project will have several theoretical contributions: (1) in parallel with defining functional
requirements for the software we need to create in-depth conceptual understanding and
description on what we mean by “new project management approaches;” (2) simulation tool
enables testing how various organizational arrangements influence project efficiency and how
they need to be modified to take different types of projects into account; 3) increased
understanding whether/how design structure matrix (DSM) can be used to describe three
complementary domains – product, process, and people/organizations, and whether it provides
the necessary data for creating a project simulation model. Theoretical contributions will be
presented in academic conferences and journal articles.
Industry Involvement In the project, industry involvement is important in the design of the required functionality of the
simulation software, specifically for defining the technical requirements for the interface between
DSM and the simulation model. The interface will also be tested and validated with DSM data
from industry partners.
Preliminary discussions have been conducted with CIFE member organizations in the
development of this proposal.
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Research Milestones and Risks The project has four milestones; which each will have a specific output and can be used to
measure the progress of the project:
-­ Definition of functional requirements for extending the POWer simulation software
(10/1/2015 – 12/31/2015)
-­ Detailed functional and technical requirements for DSM/simulation tool integration,
including specification of the DSM data model (11/1/2015 - 1/31/2016)
-­ Implementation of the technical interface, acquiring DSM data from industry partners,
and testing the interface by using a DSM representation to create a simulation model
(1/1/2016 – 4/30/2016)
-­ Validating the new DSM/simulation tool interface with industry partners (5/1/2016 –
5/30/2016)
The main risk with the project relates to the availability of DSM data from industry partners to
test the interface. This may also affect how relevant the results are from an industry point of
view. The availability and automatic retrieval of project design data in DSM format from
information systems has direct impact on cost (and time required) to create project simulation
models.
At a more general level, the development of a simulation model may require considerable effort
that is outside of the scope of this project. Part of this work is done in the APD (value co-creation
in agile project development) research project, which is a joint project between the University of
Oulu and CIFE. This risk can be mitigated by good initial planning of the functional requirements
of the new software and by applying agile methods in the development work. This allows
continuous follow-up of the project progress and prioritization of features for implementation.
Next Steps The goals of the proposed project are aligned with the value co-creation in agile project
development (APD) research project, which is a joint project between University of Oulu
(research unit of industrial engineering and management) and CIFE. APD is a two-year project
running until April 2017, thus providing one avenue to continue development work. Additionally,
at the University of Oulu, there are several ongoing large projects focused on lean construction
and related approaches for the construction industry. They can also be used to support
continuation of this research work. To facilitate this research co-operation, Dr. Jaakko Kujala
from the University of Oulu will work in CIFE as a visiting professor during fall 2015.
Additional research funding to continue development work will be sought from local funding
organizations in US (for example Project Management organizations, National Science
Foundation), as well from research funding organizations in Finland (TEKES, Academy of
Finland, European Union research funds). Additional funding for practical applications of the
research work may also be obtained through CIFE members that are applying the research results
in their organizations.
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Budget Fischer
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