Comparative analysis of process interaction and activity scanning approaches in simulation of construction operations

This work illustrates the modeling and implementation differences between Process Interaction (PI) and Activity Scanning (AS) approaches in simulation of construction operations. AS has been widely used in simulation of construction activities while PI is a common approach in simulating manufacturing and industrial operations. A rock quarry site has been chosen as a sample construction operation which inherits some degrees of uncertainty primarily in limited resource levels. The two simulation tools used are ProModel (for process interaction) and STROBOSCOPE (for activity scanning). Relevant details of implementation are described on each software in an attempt to show that both programs can sufficiently be used to model the task. We compare the results and discuss the differences.