Optimal construction scheduling: A trade-off approach between project time, cost, and residual flexibility

Belal, Mohammed Adel; Elhakeem, Ahmed Abdelmoaty

doi:10.21608/ejmtc.2023.210826.1255

Optimal construction scheduling: A trade-off approach between project time, cost, and residual flexibility

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Construction and Building Engineering Department, College of Engineering and Technology, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, Cairo, Egypt.

² Construction and Building Engineering Department, College of Engineering and Technology, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, Cairo, Egypt

10.21608/ejmtc.2023.210826.1255

Abstract

Achieving project scope on time at minimum cost is important for
contractors to ensure profitability. Existing models attempt to arrive
at optimal schedules, but without considering the delays that occur
during construction, which have been statistically proven to occur on
most projects. Since these schedules cannot guarantee delays recovery,
it cannot be claimed optimal. Hence, this paper attempts to incorporate
delay recovery during construction into the optimal schedule generation.
Recovering delays that occur over the life of the project construction
requires a set of project crashes for the remaining and incomplete
activities in the project. Ensuring that the incomplete activities can
be crashed at low cost in conjunction with the progress of the project
construction represents a proposed solution to such a problem. And it is
called in this paper the schedule's residual flexibility. In developing an
optimal schedule, a trade-off between the project time, cost, and residual
flexibility is considered.

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Main Subjects