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Estimating the Size of Temporary Facilities in Construction Site Layout Planning

Using Simulation

Conference Paper · May 2014

DOI: 10.1061/9780784413517.008

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 Estimating the Size of Temporary Facilities in Construction Site Layout
Planning Using Simulation

Seyedreza RAZAVIALAVI1, Simaan ABOURIZK1 and Pejman ALANJARI1

1
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, 5-080
Markin CNRL Natural Resources Engineering Facility, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2W2;
PH (780) 492-8096; FAX (780) 492-0249; email: reza.razavi@ualberta.ca,
abourizk@ualberta.ca, alanjari@ualberta.ca

ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a framework for estimating size of temporary facilities, a
crucial task for construction site layout planning. Underestimation of facility size can
lead to facility space shortage, productivity loss and safety problems; overestimation
results in lack of space for other facilities. Some temporary facilities have
fixed/predetermined sizes. For other facilities, size depends on progress of activities
and may vary over project duration. This study focuses on the latter, and implements
simulation as a suitable planning tool to estimate size of activity-dependent facilities.
Existing studies on site layout planning do not fully address this topic, and current
practice is often based on experts’ experience. In this study, simulation is
implemented to model the construction process, and space is considered a resource in
the model. Utilization of the resource over time indicates the space requirement trend
over the project time. The main contribution of this work is estimation of the
maximum required size of activity-dependent facilities and its variation over time.
The case study presented demonstrates practicality of the proposed approach and
capability of simulation in this area.

INTRODUCTION
Construction site layout planning is the process of identifying required
temporary facilities, and determining their size and location. Proper layout planning
impacts project time, cost and productivity. The many interdependent influencing
factors make layout planning a complicated process as it is difficult to consider all the
factors in a unique model. Although a variety of methods have been proposed by
researchers using simplifying assumptions to address this difficulty, planners often
make decisions based on their experiences in practice. Creating a widely acceptable
method and tool would aid this problem.
In different construction projects, temporary facilities (or “facilities” for short)
may consist of offices and tool trailers, equipment, fabrication yards, laydown areas,
warehouses, maintenance shops, batch plants, residence facilities, and parking lots
(Tommelein 1992; Sebt et al. 2008). Three main features of facilities including type,
size and location, should be identified over the process of site layout planning. The
types of facilities involved in a project depend on the demands of the project and
compliance with safety and health regulations. Facilities are identified by analyzing
the project activities and their required resources, as well as the project mobilization
requirements. The process of identifying the size of the facilities and positioning them
is more complex.
 In general, the size of some facilities, e.g. batch plants and cranes, is fixed and
predetermined. For other facilities, e.g. material storages, spoil piles and material
laydown areas, the size depends on the project activity progress, and may vary over
project duration. The size of such facilities, referred to as “activity-dependant”
facilities in this paper, should be estimated in the site layout planning process. The
size of activity-dependent facilities is mostly related to the required space for
temporarily maintaining construction materials or products. For these facilities, either
incoming materials/products rate or outgoing materials/products rate or both depend
on the project production rate, and the discrepancy between incoming and outgoing
materials/products demonstrates the required space for that facility at each specific
moment. For instance, the incoming material of spoil piles in tunneling projects is the
dirt coming from the excavation of the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). Therefore,
the production rate of the TBM affects the rate of the incoming materials. For the
material laydown area feeding the fabrication shop, the material consumption rate
depends on the production rate of the fabrication shop. In intermediate laydown areas
between the spool fabrication shop and module yard, both incoming and outgoing
material rates depend on the project production rate. Its incoming materials are spools
fabricated in the shop, and its rate depends on the shop production rate. Then, the
spools temporarily placed in the intermediate laydown area should be shipped to the
module yard when needed. Hence, the outgoing material rate of the laydown depends
on the production rate of the module yard. Overall, it is concluded that estimating the
production rate is a key component for determining the activity-dependent size of
facilities. Regarding the dynamic nature of construction projects, the production rate
varies over time and cannot be estimated easily with high accuracy.
To determine the position of activity-dependant facilities, planners encounter
a complicated problem due to interdependency of influencing factors. Figure 1
depicts the simplified interrelationships between the factors. As discussed earlier,
production rate influences the size of activity-dependant facilities. As such, project
schedule can have influence by determining the schedule of material delivery to the
site, or material removal from the site. Additionally, when facility size is not enough
for accommodating the materials, it can cause changes in production rate or schedule
of the project. It should be emphasized that production rate and project schedule also
have mutual impacts. On the other hand, for deciding on the location of the facilities,
the schedule of the project determines when and how long a facility is needed in the
project, while on a congested site, spatial conflicts between facilities may cause
schedule adjustments. In addition, the facility locations impact the production rate
due to its influences on flow of material, equipment and crews on the site, safety and
accessibility. Also, production rate and project schedule drive project cost and time,
which are the main decision factors in determining the facility locations. Furthermore,
the required size for facilities prompts planners to select more suitable locations for
them, while the facility location indirectly affects the facility size by influencing
production rate and project schedule.
To deal with the abovementioned complexity, the approaches for solving site
layout planning problems used in the literature have isolated their problems from
some influencing factors. In fact, they have considered that some parameters are
given, and attempted to find the other parameters. These approaches are further
discussed in the State of the Art section.

Figure 1. Interdependency of the influencing factors on determining size and

location of activity-dependant facilities

In this paper, first, the state of the art is reviewed. Then, a simulation-based
approach is proposed for estimating the activity-dependent size of facilities. In the
next section, implementation of this approach is presented through a case study. The
conclusion is drawn in the last section.

STATE OF THE ART

Many studies on site layout planning in the construction and manufacturing
industries have been undertaken. Most of them, however, have focused on finding the
optimum position of facilities. Quadratic method and continuous method are two
common methods for this purpose. In quadratic method, the potential locations of
facilities are known in advance and facilities are mapped to the locations to find the
optimum layout based on the objective function (Xie and Sahinidis 2008). In the
continuous method, facilities are positioned on the site based on their sizes and non-
overlapping constraints to achieve the optimum objective function (Xie and Sahinidis
2008). For optimization purposes, different techniques such as heuristics (e.g.
Hakobyan 2008; Zouein and Tommelein 1994), Genetic Algorithm (GA) (e.g. Sanad
et al. 2008; El-Rayes and Khalafallah 2005), Ant Colony (e.g. Ning et al. 2011), and
particle swarm optimization (e.g. Xu and Li 2012; Zhang and Wang 2008) have been
implemented in the literature. Regardless of the type of optimization techniques, both
methods attempt to deal with the complexity of site layout planning by ignoring the
influences of the facility locations on the project time and production rate. In
addition, the costs considered in these studies are limited to on-site transportation
costs, not the overall project cost.
Some studies have also ignored the influence of project schedule on facility
locations by planning the layout statically (e.g. Sanad et al. 2008). Other studies have
taken the schedule into account as given information in dynamic site layout planning,
while they have not accounted for the influence of the facility positions on the
schedule (e.g. Ning et al. 2010; Zouein and Tommelein 1999; El-Rayes and Said
2009). Assuming the project schedule as given information may cause spatial
conflicts during project execution on congested sites. To overcome this challenge, the
approach of revising the schedule was adopted in some research. Zouein and
Tommelein (2001) proposed a space scheduling algorithm to address time-space
conflicts by adjusting activity durations and start dates.
In almost all of the studies concerning the position of the facilities, the
required size of facilities has been given despite its criticality. Due to limited
available space for facilities on congested construction sites, overestimation of the
facility size results in lack of space for the other facilities, makes the site more
congested, and causes spatial conflicts. Congestion and spatial conflicts adversely
influence project productivity and safety (Halligan et al. 1994; Akinci et al. 1998). On
the other hand, underestimation of facility size leads to space shortage for that facility
and loss of productivity, and may cause safety problems. In addition, considering the
space requirement for facilities can be beneficial in dynamic site layout planning to
reuse space. In spite of its importance, a limited number of studies have addressed
estimating and optimizing the size of facilities as presented. Elbeltagi and Hegazy
(2001) implemented Artificial Intelligence in three different phases of site layout
planning: identifying facilities and their sizes, assessing the closeness relationships of
facilities, and optimization of layout. For identifying the type of the facilities and
their sizes, the knowledge-based model was developed using IF-THEN rules obtained
from literature, safety and health manuals, and company handbooks to identify 22
different temporary facilities and their required areas. These rules were based on
personnel requirements, estimated quantity of work, production rate of resources,
availability of site space, and cost. In this work, the facility size planning was isolated
from the facility positions, and some parameters like production rate were not
estimated accurately.
Since the size of the facilities may not be fixed, facility size variances over
time were evaluated by Zouein and Tommelein in 1994 and 2001. To reflect this
concept, Zouein and Tommelein (2001) defined two terminologies: dependent
resources’ space needs, which vary with the duration of the activity, and independent
resources’ space needs, which have a constant presence on site. In their space
scheduling algorithm, four profiles were also defined: Profiles A, B and C to model
dependent resources’ space needs, and Profile D to model independent resources’
space needs; “Profile A models a resource whose space requirement decreases as the
activity progresses,” “Profile B models a resource whose area requirement is either
constant or fluctuates between a minimum and a maximum level as the activity
progresses,” “Profile C models a resource requiring a constant amount of space over
time,” and “Profile D models an independent resource whose space requirement is
constant for the duration it is present on-site” (Zouein and Tommelein 2001). Zouein
and Tommelein (1994) also used the same resource profiles for dynamic site layout
planning purposes. In their model, Profile A represents the facilities with activity-
dependant size, as defined in this paper. However, the incoming and outgoing
materials of the facility were not modeled accurately and it was assumed that the
space requirement decreases linearly. Moreover, they did not consider resources other
than space, instead assuming that the resources exist in unlimited quantities.
To estimate the size of facilities, in this paper, simulation is proposed as a
suitable planning tool to account for the important parameters including project
schedule, production rate, and facility incoming and outgoing materials. Simulation is
also able to account for uncertainties inherent in construction projects. The simulation
application in this area was demonstrated by Tommelein (1999) in identifying the
best number of tool rooms in construction projects among different alternatives to
meet the demands by assessing workers’ travel time and waiting time. Apart from this
work, simulation was used for positioning facilities (e.g. Zhou et al. 2009; Azadivar
and Wang 2000; Bruzzone et al. 2010), and allocation of products to different storage
facilities (Marasini et al. 2001). Therefore, using simulation in estimating the size of
facilities is a novel technique in site layout planning.

SIMULATION-BASED MODEL FOR ESTIMATING FACILITY SIZE

In the previous sections, the challenges of site layout planning because of
interdependency of the influencing factors, and the shortcomings of the existing
methods were discussed. To overcome the challenges and bridge the gap existing in
the developed tools, discrete event simulation is proposed as a sophisticated
technique. Simulation is defined in construction engineering and management as “the
science of modeling a construction production system and experimenting with the
resulting model on a computer” (Abourizk et al. 2011). The capability of simulation
in modeling the complexity of construction processes has been expanded using the
tools developed, such as STROBOSCOPE (Martinez and Ioannou 1996) and
Simphony (Hajjar and AbouRizk 1996). In this study, the construction process is
modeled in the Simphony environment. Some of the advantages of using simulation
in estimating the size of facilities include that simulation can properly model complex
activities and resource interactions in construction projects; simulation can intuitively
display parameters corresponding to resources (e.g. utilizations and waiting time for a
resource) over project duration; simulation can properly analyze the influence of
resource shortages on the project schedule and production rate; space can be
considered a resource in simulation models and its effect on productivity and
production rate, as well as its interaction with other resources, can be easily analyzed;
and in simulation models, the uncertainties in construction can be considered using
stochastic input data, and statistical analyses of the output data.
To take advantage of simulation, a framework is proposed, as illustrated in
Figure 2. In this framework, the project schedule, including the workpackages,
activity sequences and resources, is the input for building the simulation model.
Required space for activity-dependent facilities is defined as a resource due to the fact
that lack of space for these facilities causes delays and reductions to the production
rate. In addition, simulation can provide the parameters of utilizations and waiting
time for a resource. Using this information, the maximum required space for the
facilities can be determined while no waiting time for space exists.
Figure 2. The proposed framework for determining the maximum required size
of activity-dependent facilities

As discussed earlier, the required space for construction materials or products

is the main concern in sizing activity-dependent facilities. Hence, material flow is a
significant element of the simulation model because materials occupy space in such
facilities and determine the required size of facilities. In fact, materials are circulating
in the simulation model as entities with these attributes: required space for each unit
of materials, and material incoming and outgoing time. These two attributes identify
how much space is occupied by the material and how long the material stays within
the facility.
In the introduction, it was mentioned that incoming and outgoing material
rates of facilities may be either dependent or independent from the project production
rate. If dependant, size can be determined from simulation, with respect to the activity
sequence and progress. If independent, it is considered given data. In simulation
where space is modeled as a resource, the entities (i.e. materials) capture the required
number of space resources at the incoming time and release them at the outgoing
time. If the space resource is not available, materials should wait until enough space
is released, which is not desirable in projects. That is, the space resource is increased
until no waiting time exists for it. The space resource utilization, then, indicates the
maximum required space for the facilities, and its trend over the project time. The
resource interactions and the effect of availability of other resources like equipment
and labourers on the incoming and outgoing time of materials, e.g. when they may be
needed for loading and off-loading the materials, can be considered in the simulation
model. In the proposed framework, it was assumed that the positions of the facilities
are known, and the number of resources other than space are predetermined and
fixed.

CASE STUDY
In a steel structure construction project, six areas, Area1 to Area6, are
designed to temporarily maintain steel materials to be erected during the project. The
materials in the last two areas need to be handled to the structure for erection and
preassembling as required because they are located far from the structure, while the
first four areas are located around the structure and do not need handling. The main
activity sequences and their required resources are exhibited in Figure 3. In this
project, material incomings are based on the delivery schedule and material outgoings
depend on project progress. The project consists of a couple of workpackages with
their own specifications. A sample of these specifications is shown in Table 1. It
should be noted that some input data are stochastic and presented in terms of
triangular distributions because of uncertainties in the project.

Figure 3. Activity sequences and their required resources

Table 1. A Sample of Workpackages’ Specifications

Parameters Value
Total weight 90 tonnes
Delivery time April 25th- May 12th
Delivery shift time 7 days/week and 9 hours/day
Delivery rate of materials 5 tonnes/day
Offloading time Triangular dist. (0.24, 0.35, 0.53) crew hr/ton
Offloading place East of the structure
Offloading resources 4 forklifts
Planned total erection time May 28th- June 4th
Erection rate by large cranes Triangular dist. (0.11, 0.17, 0.28) crane hr/ton
Erection resources 2 cranes
Type of cranes for erection Crane 1 and 2
Erection shift time 5 days/week and 9 hours/day
Preassembly time 5 days
Priority for allocating resources Offloading has a priority over erection
Estimated required area to place 1 80 ft2
ton materials

Having simulated the process, the mean and the mean interval of the
maximum required space for each laydown area for 20 runs is identified, as shown in
Table 2. In Figure 4, the trend of varying the maximum required space for Area 4 is
shown as a sample of the results. Using this trend, a planner can consider different
sizes for the facility over time as shown by the other line. This result is very
beneficial in dynamic site layout planning to reuse the area. The boxes show how
much space is saved implementing this method for planning facility size.
 Table 2. Maximum Required Space for the Laydown Areas

Laydown Mean (Sft) Mean interval with 90% confidence level

Area1 75352 [75166 , 76370]
Area2 87708 [87903, 88609]
Area3 118840 [116427, 119589]
Area4 89080 [87738, 91158]
Area5 14616 [14134, 15098]
Area6 11008 [10587, 11429]

Figure 4. Space-time chart for Area3

CONCLUSION
In this paper, the complexity of the site layout planning due to the
interdependency of the influencing factors in construction projects was described.
Through analyzing the state of the art, it was found that the influence of some
important factors, such as production rate and project schedule, are mostly
overlooked or assumed as given information to simplify the task of identifying size
and location of facilities, which makes the model less realistic and accurate. In this
study, simulation was proposed as a suitable planning tool to model material flow and
facility size, and account for uncertainties and the mutual impacts of influencing
factors. In particular, the main contribution of this study is estimating the maximum
required size of the facilities to avoid delays caused by space shortage. Modeling
space as a resource in simulation, the space requirement trend over the project time
can also be obtained, which aids managers in dynamic site layout planning
considerably. Implementing the results of this research leads to improvements in the
following crucial areas in construction projects: space utilization, by more accurately
estimating the required space trend for facilities over time; safety, by reducing
congestion; project productivity, by reducing spatial conflicts and congestion; project
time, by avoiding delays caused by lack of space; and inventory storage costs, by
avoiding overestimation of facility sizes.
It should be emphasized that regarding the geometrical constraints and
congestion of the site, it may not be possible to provide the maximum required size
for all facilities. That is, the managers may decide on altering the other factors such as
the number of crews and equipment units, and schedule of delivery of materials to
reduce the need for space. Also, managers may be able to allocate more space to
facilities in order to recover space shortage. Accounting for these managerial actions
will be addressed in future research. In addition, integrating simulation with existing
planning tools, particularly BIM, will be a great assistance in considering geometrical
constraints and retrieving information needed for building simulation models.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to extend their appreciation to Waiward Steel Fabricators Ltd.
for their vital input and cooperation during the case study.

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