Presentations

Civil infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, ports, tunnels, and airports, are critical endeavors for the growth and modernization of societies. Their public nature creates a unique level of exposure and scrutiny where project performance is in the eye of society. But unfortunately, the delivery of civil infrastructure projects suffers from less-than-opt ...

Every key performance indicator used to monitor a project’s construction progress emphasizes trade productivity or specific commodity run-down curves. Examples include productivity of welding by quantity of joints completed per day, quantity of NDT (Non-Destructive Test) inspection per day, etc. By understanding that project production system is the collection of ...

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a rapidly evolving technology that has been widely adopted in various industries for its ability to automate repetitive and rule-based tasks. In this paper, we present a case study of RPA implementation for Estimating Services within Saudi Aramco. The implementation of RPA has led to increased productivity, reduced processing t ...

Using the basic principles of Operations Science, this paper seeks to reveal the secret, one that is hidden in plane sight, of the success of Lean. The list of seven, eight or even ten forms of waste are replaced by one malefactor, variability and the three buffers that will always be present to couple demand with transformation.

Nuclear power is returning to the energy agenda in Europe and elsewhere across the globe because of the challenges of Climate Change and a refreshed understanding of the need for energy security. Nuclear power has a cost problem which is largely driven by the high cost of construction and long build schedules. This paper addresses the key ways of making nuclear p ...

Kanban, a subsystem within the Toyota Production System, was popularized throughout the world alongside just-in-time (JIT), fool-proofing, heijunka, kaizen, andon, hoshin kanri, etc., as part of Lean Manufacturing approaches and techniques. Kanban’s simplicity, effectiveness, and robustness are well-understood by many. At the same time, it is probably one of the ...

The concurrent development of product designs and process designs, typically to achieve a balance of customer requirements, product functionality, and predictable buildability, is one effective technique in the pursuit of industrialized construction. Too many customer requirements and functions, and the product becomes difficult and unpredictable to deliver. Too ...

Construction simulation models often need to interrupt activities in progress when events such as equipment breakdowns or differing soil conditions are encountered. The new functions and statements to support activity preemption directly in the STROBOSCOPE simulation system are described and illustrated by two examples. The first example involves moving soil usin ...