Although a number of container terminal simulators have been developed for various purposes, none of the existing simulators allow the system structure to reuse the system structure depending on application. Our goal is to develop highly reusable, highly inter-operable and flexible container terminal simulation system. The High Level Architecture(HLA) is an architecture for reuse and inter-operation of simulation. It is based on premise that no simulation can satisfy all use and users. An individual simulation or set of simulations developed for one purpose can be applied to another application under the HLA concept of the federation : a composable set of interacting simulations. The intent of the HLA is a structure which will support reuse of capabilities available in different simulations, ultimately reducing the cost and time required to create a synthetic environment for a new purpose, and the possibility of distributed collaborative development of complex simulation applications. In this paper, we discuss the design of a HLA-based port container terminal simulation system. Furthermore, we describe various technical motivations for HLA, the key elements of the architecture and how they are minimum and essential to the goal of reuse and interoperability.