Facilitating Smart Contract in Project Scheduling under Uncertainty—A Choquet Integral Approach

The expected benefit of smart contract (SC) relies heavily on its completeness and adaptability. Previous studies have discussed the application of SC on construction at the conceptual level, while a method to reflect human preferences as action items to enforce schedule executability is not available for construction managers. The objectives of this research are (1) to develop a method to generalize human preference as scheduling practices, and (2) to utilize SC technology to facilitate the execution of the practice. Performance data of different labor investment and production rate arrangements were obtained through a simulation of a high-rise construction project operation. This research used a Choquet Integral-based approach to aggregate owners’ preferences on workspace overlap, manpower utilization, and project duration to customize the optimum scenarios for resource utilization. Such decision rules were bundled with payment transactions and then embedded as agreements in an SC-based scheduling platform. The SC platform developed can provide the optimized resource utilization solution under different preferences, meanwhile timely disseminate schedule information and facilitate payment transactions. The research findings will assist project managers to quickly react to unexpected changes in management preferences in manpower, space, or schedule by developing adaptable resource utilization solutions. It will also help them to enforce the execution of the plan timely using the SC scheduling platform.