Short-term resource-constrained scheduling for construction projects

The construction industry is suffering from crew productivity decline. Research findings show that resource unavailability to work crews is a major source of job inefficiencies on construction projects. The problem arises from performing activity scheduling and resource scheduling independently from one another. In an effort to solve the problem, the thesis presents a study on construction scheduling methods that consider resource constraints on projects. Application of the methods is intended for short-term project execution planning with a planning horizon of two weeks of less. A survey of research performed in relevant fields resulted in the identification of optimal and heuristic resource-constrained scheduling methods that enable scheduling of activities on the basis of resource constraints. An initial attempt is made to apply an optimal resource-constrained scheduling method to construction scheduling. Formulation of the mathematical model and preliminary experiments show that an application of the optimal approach is limited with current computing power. Furthermore, the study of existing heuristic procedures reveals that their direct application to construction scheduling is also limited. Consequently, the thesis presents a sequential resource constrained scheduling heuristic that incorporates the relative importance among construction resources. Given a fixed project duration, the heuristic generates resource-feasible construction schedules with less computational burden than existing heuristics and provides resource service sequences while minimizing the required quantities.