Trade-off between Safety and Cost in Planning Construction Site Layouts
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 131, Issue 11
Abstract
Planning construction site layouts involves identifying the positions of temporary facilities on site, and accordingly it has a significant impact on the safety and efficiency of construction operations. Although available models are capable of minimizing the travel cost of resources on site, they do not consider safety as an important and separate objective in the optimization of site layouts. This paper presents the development of an expanded site layout planning model that is capable of maximizing construction safety and minimizing the travel cost of resources on site, simultaneously. The model incorporates newly developed concepts and performance criteria that enable the quantification of construction safety and travel cost of resources on site. The present model is developed in three main phases: (1) formulating decision variables and optimization objectives in this site layout planning problem; (2) identifying and satisfying all practical constraints in this optimization problem; and (3) implementing the model as a multiobjective genetic algorithm. An application example is analyzed to illustrate the use of the model and demonstrate its capabilities in optimizing construction site layouts and generating optimal trade-offs between safety and travel cost of resources on site.
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Acknowledgments
The writers gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided for this research project by the National Science Foundation under the NSF CAREER award number NSFCMS 0238470 and the NSF NSFITR 0427089.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 131 • Issue 11 • November 2005
Pages: 1186 - 1195
Copyright
© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: Jun 9, 2004
Accepted: Apr 29, 2005
Published online: Nov 1, 2005
Published in print: Nov 2005
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