| Title |
Understanding Collaborative Working Processes within Construction Project Teams Using Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation |
| Authors |
Son, JeongWook ; Shin, Seung-Woo ; Yi, June-Seong |
| DOI |
http://dx.doi.org/10.6106/KJCEM.2014.15.1.070 |
| Keywords |
Construction Management ; Project Organizations ; Collaboration ; Computer Simulation |
| Abstract |
Collaborative processes among team members including communication, coordination, and information-handling processes either during pre-construction or project execution are required in order to accomplish the objectives of construction projects. However, current construction management practice does not explicitly take the effect of organizational aspects on project performance into account. This paper introduces a method to understand collaborative processes in an explicit and systematic fashion. An agent-based simulation of collaborative working processes within construction project teams was designed from game theory perspective and implemented. The simulation produced both individual behavior and network dynamics. Individuals represented as agents made efforts to improve performance by communication and coordinating with other members, and overall team network was emerged as a result of interactions among members. Interestingly, it was found that the tendency of forming cohesive subgroups increased when sustaining relations with between-group partners incurs higher cost. The primary contribution of this paper is that it presented an explicit approach to examining collaborative working processes in construction project teams and it extended existing computational organization and network studies by integrating individual behavior models and network models. |