Investigate the Impact of Different Resource Allocation Strategies on the Design of Building Projects Using Simulation

The design of building projects involves several types of resources such as architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and draftsmen, among others. For design firms to stay in business in this very competitive market, they need to manage their resources in a way that improves productivity and cost effectiveness. This task, however, is not simple and requires thorough analysis of process-level operations, resource use, and productivity. Typically, these operational aspects are the responsibility of the design office manager who assigns available resources to the different design projects to save time and lower design expenses. It is noted that limited studies have been carried out in the literature to model overall organizational operations and behavioral aspects, particularly in firms specialized in the design of building projects. In an effort to simplify the modeling process, a simplified modeling and simulation tool is used in this research. A simulation model representing an actual design office was developed assuming that the office performs designs for small, medium, and large size building projects. The developed model was used to simulate several alternatives and examine various resource assignment strategies. The simulation was conducted over ten years and the resulting productivity and income was measured.