Resource Allocation and Leveling in Construction Management Projects with Resource Histogram

Mohammad Azim Eirgash

doi:10.11648/j.ajetm.20200506.11

Abstract

Resource allocation and leveling in construction management projects have been an enthusiastic subject to plenty of researchers since the advancement of the scheduling techniques. Many researchers have studied various versions of the benchmark resource leveling and allocation optimization problems using various scheduling techniques. However, in this study, a straightforward scheduling technique called resource histogram is utilized to allocate and level the available resources. Moreover, the maximum number of resources at peak time is considered as a significant aspect of the case study. Since peak demand isn’t a preferred by the contractor. The effects of resources are also examined in order to demonstrate the variation of the total duration of the project which provides flexibility to decision-makers in making intelligent decisions regarding the use of the resources. Thereby, a construction project with seven activities taken from the technical literature is examined with constrained as well as unconstrained conditions using Microsoft Excel. However, task scheduling is performed using critical path method (CPM). The results indicate that limitation on resources significantly affect the performance and cause the project to be extended beyond the scheduled duration. Moreover, besides renewable, non-renewable resources (e.g., cost demand) may also be significant parameters and this extension can be considered in future research.

Highlights

Resource allocation or loading is nothing but the assigning required resource to each activity in amount and timing
Two sample problems of construction projects indicate the ability of OMODE generated non-dominated solutions to assist project managers to select an appropriate plan to optimize time–cost-utilization work shift tradeoff (TCUT) [15]
The total number of resources required on each day are obtained by adding the resource requirements of individual activities on that particular activity, and resource profile determined as chart called resource aggregation chart

Summary

Introduction

Resource allocation or loading is nothing but the assigning required resource to each activity in amount and timing. Resource leveling is the process of allocating resources among various activities such that peak requirement of resource is reduced with a constraint on time. Thereby, for the resource levelling problem GA is a good alternative choice Lucko in his papar tried to analyze criticality of linear schedules with the unique singularity functions. Garmsiri and Abassi applied an ant algorithm which determines the execution mode of each activity such that resource leveling index and project time become optimum. In another study Khanzadi et al have tried to unravel some resource allocation problems For this purpose, two new metaheuristic algorithms so-called colliding body optimization and charged system search have been applied. In a similar study Cheng and Tran developed a modern optimization algorithm, the Opposition-based Multiple

Objective

Methodology

Identification of critical activities

Application

First Scenario

Second Scenario

Conclusion

Recommendation