Optimization of Change Order Management Process with Object-Oriented Discrete Event Simulation: Case Study

Abstract

Change orders are common to most construction projects. They can significantly increase project cost and duration, leading to more claims and disputes and ultimately creating an adversarial relationship among project members. Evidence has shown that a contributing factor to the inefficiency of change order management is the management process utilized in most construction projects, which always relates to suboptimal allocation of resources and unnecessary procedures. Discrete event simulation (DES) provides an effective approach to streamline the change order management process by evaluating a series of improvement options. Based on a comparison of two prevailing DES paradigms, activity scanning (AS) and process interaction (PI), this paper presents an object-oriented DES model to investigate the change order management process. A case study has been performed to investigate the change order management process at a Midwestern land-grant university with the proposed simulation model, where the bottlenecks of