Advanced Stochastic Schedule Simulation System

Abstract

This paper introduces an automated tool named Advanced Stochastic Schedule Simulation System (AS4). It integrates critical path method (CPM) schedule data exported from Primavera Project Planner (P3) and historical activity duration data obtained from a project data warehouse, computes the best-fit probability distribution functions (PDFs) of historical activity durations, assigns the PDFs identified to respective activities, computes the optimum number of simulation runs, simulates the schedule network for the optimum number of iteration runs, and estimates the best-fit PDF of project completion times (PCTs) without user intervention at any time. AS4 improves the reliability of simulation-based scheduling by effectively dealing with the uncertainties of the activities’ durations, increases the usability of the schedule data obtained from commercial CPM software, and effectively handles the variability of the PCTs by finding the best-fit PDF of PCTs. AS4 encourages the use of simulation-based scheduling because it is simple to use and it simplifies the tedious and burdensome process involved in finding the PDFs of the many activities’ durations, in assigning the PDFs to the many activities of a new network under modelling, and in estimating the best-fit PDF of PCTs.