Abstract
Abstract Repetition of the same processes on different objects or units of a construction project and their concurrent execution makes it necessary to use the same limited resources at the same time. Managers prefer simple heuristic priority rules to scheduling construction activities, but there is not one the best for all projects. In addition that the experience from deterministic scheduling problems and priority-rule methods cannot always be directly transferred to stochastic environment. The paper presents the pure reactive simulation model for planning construction projects in random conditions, taking into account the availability of renewable resources. Conducting simulation tests allows for various priority rules to determine the distribution of construction project duration and evaluate the robustness of the schedule. The paper analyzes the effectiveness of the selected priority rules in a pipe line project. In the analyzed project, the Dynamic Minimum Slack rule ensures the lowest average duration of the project in random conditions and the highest quality robustness. The analysis of the simulation results can help the construction manager to choose the procedure ensuring the timely completion of the construction project in the stochastic environment.
Highlights
The schedule and budget of the project can be analyzed from two separate points of view
Subsequent activities are added to the partial schedule previously determined based on the so-called scheduling policy, which in every decision point adds new activities taking precedence and resource constraints into consideration
The solution created by the Most Immediate Successors (MIS) rule has a relatively low RMi equal to 3.8, the MIS is a deterministic rule, it does not need to be recalculated during the implementation of processes and it can be preferred by a construction managers
Summary
The schedule and budget of the project can be analyzed from two separate points of view. The examples analyzed showed that the minimum average duration of the project is generated using: Most Immediate Successors, Rank Positional Weight, Greatest Cumulative Resource Demand, and the Minimum Slack Time PRs. Li et al [20] developed a procedure based on common random numbers for comparison of feasible sequences obtained by the simulation method using different PRs for scheduling projects with random activities duration. Depending on the aim of the project manager, the ranking alternatives (schedules generated using different PRs) can be created based on: average time of project completion (quality metrics) or quality robustness measures. The Qualitative Simulation Graphs (QSG) model proposed by Ingalls and Morrice [27] maps the PERT networks with resources in the form of an acyclic graph, which represents all acceptable schedules, regardless of the adopted strategy of resource allocation and randomness of activities duration
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