Investigating the Cost-Benefit Trade-Off of Additional Planning Using Parade Game Simulation

In construction projects, an unreliable work plan causes unstable workflow, which often results in task completion delay, system throughput decrease, and waste increase. Such a workflow can be managed effectively by promoting work-plan reliability through better planning strategies. The Parade Game is a construction management educational tool that demonstrates the impact of production capacity variability (influencing work-plan reliability) on the construction project performance. Previous studies on Parade Game simulation assumed the same amount of variability across the board for all trades due to the interest of simplicity in simulation. However, in reality, the level of variability differs from one trade to another, depending on the complexity level of the work and effort in planning. Furthermore, the allocation of crews with different variability and its impact on project performance has not been studied in previous research. This paper further developed Parade Game simulation as an education tool by proposing a new simulation model that uses different variability levels and the corresponding costs at different work stations. The objectives of this research were to (1) identify the consequence of having higher or lower variability levels at early, middle, or late stations, and (2) demonstrate the benefits of reliability improvement from the cost and production standpoints. The contribution to the body of knowledge is that this research analyzed the cost and benefit trade-off between investment in planning reliability and productivity improvement in different scenarios of a construction production system.