USING COMBINED DISCRETE-EVENT/ CONTINUOUS MODELING FOR SIMULATION OF SAFETY INCIDENTS ON PROJECT NETWORKS

Safety incidents are an expected part of construction; their occurrence leads to cost and schedule overruns, and sometimes severe worker injury. Incidents can be reduced through mitigation in the planning phase. To reduce safety incidents, proper quantification of risk impact is necessary throughout the project. Incorporating continuously occurring safety risks within a project network schedule represented by discrete activities remains challenging. This paper proposes a methodology for building a combined discrete-event continuous simulation model to predict safety-incident related schedule delays. An algorithm uses project information stored in a database to automatically construct a Critical Path Method (CPM) network in Simphony.NET. The model simulates daily risk occurrence using a discrete-event process to model reduced project productivity. An illustrative example is explained, and results are compared with a base case CPM network. Activities having a higher risk of incident occurrence are recorded to help practitioners develop proper mitigation strategies during project planning.