Flexible Activity Relations to Support Optimum Schedule Acceleration
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 142, Issue 11
Abstract
In construction schedules, a logical relationship between two activities is specified by the relationship type and a fixed lag time. This rigid representation, however, does not consider the situation when two activities have a degree of flexibility in their relationship. Such flexibility, or soft relation, can be very beneficial as it provides a range of overlapping options that can be utilized in situations that require the schedule to be optimally accelerated. This paper thus proposes a formalization of a generic logical relationship (hard or soft) of any type (finish-to-start, etc.) between any two activities. Using the generic representation, modified activity start and finish time computations are presented to accommodate the overlaps associated with soft relations, and are used in a schedule-crashing model. The model determines the optimum combination of activity crashing and overlapping decisions that minimizes project cost without violating the resource constraints. The new activity relationship and crashing model are beneficial to both researchers and practitioners as they facilitate schedule optimization decisions for projects that exercise a good level of overlapping, such as fast-track projects.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Beck, J. C., Feng, T. K., and Watson, J. (2011). “Combining constraint programming and local search for job-shop scheduling.” INFORMS J. Comput., 23(1), 1–14.
Berthaut, F., Grèze, L., Pellerin, R., Perrier, N., and Hajji, A. (2011). “Optimal resource-constraint project scheduling with overlapping modes.” Cirrelt, 09, 1–15.
Bogus, S. M., Diekmann, J. E., Molenaar, K. R., Harper, C., Patil, S., and Lee, J. S. (2013). “Simulation of overlapping design activities in concurrent engineering.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 950–957.
Chan, W. T., and Hu, H. (2002). “Constraint programming approach to precast production scheduling.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 513–521.
Dehghan, R., and Ruwnapura, J. (2014). “Model of trade-off between overlapping and rework of design activities.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 04013043.
Feng, C.-W., Liu, L., and Burns, S. A. (1997). “Using genetic algorithms to solve construction time-cost trade-off problems.” J. Comput. Civ. Eng., 184–189.
Gerk, J. E. V., and Qassim, R. Y. (2008). “Project acceleration via activity crashing, overlapping, and substitution.” IEEE Trans. Eng. Manage., 55(4), 590–601.
Hazini, K., Dehghan, R., and Ruwanpura, J. (2013). “A heuristic method to determine optimum degree of activity accelerating and overlapping in schedule compression.” Can. J. Civ. Eng., 40(4), 382–391.
Hazini, K., Dehghan, R., and Ruwanpura, J. (2014). “An evolutionary optimization method to determine optimum degree of activity accelerating and overlapping in schedule compression.” Can. J. Civ. Eng., 41(4), 333–342.
Heipcke, S. (1999). “Comparing constraint programming and mathematical programming approaches to discrete optimisation—The change problem.” J. Oper. Res. Soc., 50(6), 581–595.
Hendrickson, C., and Au, T. (1989). Project management for construction, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Hossain, M. A., and Chua, D. K. H. (2014). “Overlapping design and construction activities and an optimization approach to minimize rework.” Int. J. Project Manage., 32(6), 983–994.
ILOG CPLEX Optimization Studio version 12.6 [Computer software]. IBM, New York.
Khoueiry, Y., Srour, I., and Yassine, A. (2013). “An optimization-based model for maximizing the benefits of fast-track construction activities.” J. Oper. Res. Soc., 64(8), 1137–1146.
Li, H., and Love, P. (1997). “Using improved genetic algorithms to facilitate time-cost optimization.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 233–237.
Liess, O., and Michelon, P. (2008). “A constraint programming approach for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem.” Ann. Oper. Res., 157(1), 25–36.
Lim, T., Yi, C., and Lee, D. (2014). “Concurrent construction scheduling simulation algorithm.” Comput.-Aided Civ. Infrastruct. Eng., 29(6), 449–463.
Liu, S., and Wang, C. (2011). “Optimizing project selection and scheduling problems with time dependent resource constraints.” Autom. Constr., 20(8), 1110–1119.
Menesi, W., Golzarpoor, B., and Hegazy, T. (2013). “Fast and near optimum schedule optimization for large-scale projects.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 1117–1124.
Moselhi, O. (1993). “Schedule compression using the direct stiffness method.” Can. J. Civ. Eng., 20(1), 65–72.
Pagnoni, A. (1990). Project engineering: Computer oriented planning and operational decision making, Springer, Berlin.
Roemer, T. A., and Ahmadi, R. (2004). “Concurrent crashing and overlapping in product development.” Oper. Res., 52(4), 606–622.
Siemens, N. (1971). “A simple CPM time-cost tradeoff algorithm.” Manage. Sci., 17(6), B354–B363.
Srour, I. M., Abdul-Malak, M. A. U., Yassine, A. A., and Ramadan, M. (2013). “A methodology for scheduling overlapped design activities based on dependency information.” Autom. Constr., 29, 1–11.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 142 • Issue 11 • November 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 24, 2015
Accepted: Apr 18, 2016
Published online: Jun 8, 2016
Published in print: Nov 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Nov 8, 2016
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.