Project Planning for Construction under Uncertainty with Limited Resources
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 133, Issue 4
Abstract
Much of the project scheduling literature treats task durations as deterministic. In reality, however, task durations are subject to considerable uncertainty, and that uncertainty can be influenced by the resources assigned. The purpose of this paper is to provide the means for contractors to optimally allocate their skilled workers among individual tasks for a single project. Instead of the traditional use of schedules, we develop control policies in the form of planned resource allocation to tasks that capture the uncertainty associated with task durations and the impact of resource allocation on those durations. We develop a solution procedure for the model and illustrate the ideas in an example. The data for the example is collected from a real project.
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Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF0218837. This funding is gratefully acknowledged but it implies no endorsement of the findings.
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© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 22, 2005
Accepted: Sep 6, 2006
Published online: Apr 1, 2007
Published in print: Apr 2007
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