Expanding Finance-Based Scheduling to Devise Overall-Optimized Project Schedules
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 133, Issue 1
Abstract
Construction contractors often finance projects using bank credit lines that allow contractors to withdraw money up to certain credit limits. Finance-based scheduling provides schedules that ensure that the contractor’s indebtedness at any time during the construction stage does not exceed the credit limit. Generally, constricted credit limits tend to yield prolonged schedules. Provided that credit limits can be adequately relaxed, compressed schedules of compressed-duration activities can be attained. Devising a compressed schedule calls for the incorporation of time-cost trade-off (TCT) analysis to strike a balance between the decreased overhead costs and the increased direct costs of the activities. Since employing TCT analysis usually causes great fluctuations in the daily resource requirements by mixing compressed-duration activities of high resource demand with others of low resource demand, therefore, the need for resource management techniques becomes inevitable to ensure efficient utilization of resources. This note used genetic algorithms to expand finance-based scheduling to devise schedules for relaxed credit limits. A prototype system was developed and coded using VISUAL BASIC, then demonstrated using a five-activity example project. The prototype was validated by comparing the results with those obtained by using the integer programming. Expanding finance-based scheduling to handle the whole spectrum of credit limits helps devise overall-optimized schedules that consider cash, time, cost, and resources.
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Acknowledgments
The first writer would like to thank King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for its continuous support and encouragement.
References
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Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 27, 2004
Accepted: Jul 6, 2006
Published online: Jan 1, 2007
Published in print: Jan 2007
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