Probabilistic Optimal-Cost Scheduling
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 127, Issue 6
Abstract
During the planning and execution of construction projects, it often becomes necessary to shorten the duration of the project. A widely used technique for reducing the duration of a project is commonly referred to as least-cost scheduling. This procedure is based on deterministically arriving at the shortest project duration for the minimum cost possible. There is, however, one major problem with the typical application of this technique. It does not address the variability inherent in the duration and cost of the project activities. Thus, the resulting compressed schedule value cannot be applied with any stated level of statistical confidence. This paper presents a new procedure that addresses some of the major shortcomings of least-cost scheduling. It does so by accounting for the variability inherent in the duration and cost of the scheduled activities by simultaneously applying range estimating and probabilistic scheduling to the historical data. The resulting data set is then analyzed to provide a compressed schedule duration and cost estimate that have a higher overall confidence of being achieved.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 127 • Issue 6 • December 2001
Pages: 431 - 437
History
Received: May 22, 2000
Published online: Dec 1, 2001
Published in print: Dec 2001
Authors
Metrics & Citations
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