Abstract
Abstract The construction industry is one of the most important activities that contributes towards the economic growth of any nation. However, the sector has been experiencing problems of cost and time overruns, particularly the problems are significant for the lowest-bid awarded construction projects in the developing countries where inappropriate planning is reported to be one of the major causes. Thus, the paper aims at developing an integrated scheduling approach for construction projects during the planning phase from a project owner’s perspective. The proposed approach integrates cost estimation and schedule in light of practical activity precedence and mathematical cost optimization using different project commencement dates. The study has shown that cost and time optimization model could yield impractical results unless double precedence relations (start-to-start plus finish-to-finish) are imposed between some activities such as trench excavation and pipe laying. It has also demonstrated that the cost and time budgeted during the planning phase would substantially deviate from actual if the planned construction start date slips from the plan, particularly for short period projects. The proposed approach demonstrated in the paper can sufficiently allow planning engineers to develop a comprehensive construction schedule so that the cost and time overruns in the lowest-bid awarded construction projects can be reduced. The paper provides empirical insights into how a robust construction schedule is developed from an owner’s perspective. Cost-time optimization and risk analysis results obtained from manual computation might reduce the reasonable accuracy of the desired cost and schedule integration unless each activity is assigned its own calendar.
Highlights
The construction industry has turned out to be one of the major driving forces behind economic development of developing countries, such as Ethiopia. It contributes to high employment opportunity next to agriculture (EEA, 2008) and to income creation for the population, and it contributes to government revenue through generation of corporate profit tax and income tax from employees
Water supply construction project comprising fourteen activities is used for a demonstration purpose, and its cost estimation and resource allocation are presented in Table 1 of Appendix 1
70 % of the total construction cost is taken as direct cost and 30 % – as indirect cost
Summary
The construction industry has turned out to be one of the major driving forces behind economic development of developing countries, such as Ethiopia. It contributes to high employment opportunity next to agriculture (EEA, 2008) and to income creation for the population, and it contributes to government revenue through generation of corporate profit tax and income tax from employees. A small improvement in the construction sector will certainly generate lots of benefits. The level of construction project management practice during the design and construction stages is very low (Wubishet, 2004). The actual cost and duration of some projects substantially exceed that stipulated in the contract. Authors (Ayalew et al, 2016) reported that the public project underwent slippage
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