Fairness model considering satisfaction and preferences for service scheduling on electronic platforms in construction industry

Abstract

Advancements of electronic platforms in construction industry makes it possible for construction service scheduling (CSS). However, fairness concerns in CSS, such as unfairness in scheduling solutions due to information asymmetry, remains inadequately addressed among existing studies. This study proposes a fairness scheduling model that considers the preferences of participants. According to real engineering practices, a multi-level CSS model with 12 objectives is established by thoroughly considering participants’ preferences, aiming to deliver equitable prices and CSS solutions. In solving the model, a clustering operation considering price fairness and inheritance operation considering participants’ preferences are designed for the developed evolutionary algorithm. Finally, a simulated case study derived from a real-world construction project demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm. The results show the superior performance of the proposed model, as it recommends fairer prices and solutions to the CSS problem over the five comparator models. Meanwhile, the proposed algorithm offers more fair solutions with better comprehensive performance than the NSGA3, MOEA/D, MOEA/DD, and RVEA algorithms. This study can be extended to scheduling fairness issues in other fields (e.g., e-commerce, cloud manufacturing, and energy trading), while providing references for researches on service scheduling.