Simphony: an environment for building special purpose construction simulation tools

Special-purpose simulation (SPS) is a proven principle that can lead to the effective transfer of simulation knowledge to the construction industry. Three separate industry experiments have led to the identification of a set of requirements that construction SPS tools should adhere to in order to be successful. This set of requirements was then used in the implementation of a computer system called Simphony. The system greatly simplifies the SPS tool development process and standardizes the simulation, modeling, analysis and integration features of such tools. The result is a complete environment that can be tailored to the needs of both novice and advanced simulation tool developers and users.