Robust Critical Chain Scheduling for Construction Projects Considering Scheduling Pracitce

Abstract

Scheduling is a major concern in construction planning and management. Construction Projects are always executed under uncertainty with various types of work involved (Ma et al.,2015

Long and Ohsato, 2008). Uncertainties may lead to increase the risk of total duration delay, discrepancies between the actual and planned schedules and difficulties in planning schedules to assist site operation (Zhong et al., 2015). However, The CPM, most frequently used in the construction projects, often fails to cope with the uncertain environment and project delay frequently occurs. CCS is a viable alternative as generating robust schedule using buffer. A few studies had attempted to apply CCS to construction, however, they did not reflect the diversity of construction activity and the scheduling process used in practice (Krystyna, 2017). Previous researches applying CCS for construction projects were not sufficient to verify CCSs practical usefulness as not reflecting the degree of uncertainty and the scheduling process in construction practice. Therefore, in this research, we apply and simulate CCS to the construction by reflecting the many of practices. Also, this research evaluates and compare sthe performance of schedule in the measure of robustness, which is the ability to cope with uncertainty. To do this, questionnaire from practitioner were surveyed and monte carlo simulation model was developed to assess the performance of schedule. As a result of the study, it was confirmed that various uncertainties of construction activity and construction practices should be considered when applying CCS to construction work. This research observed that the project completion probability was stable and the buffer consumption pattern changed according to the degree of uncertainty when reflecting the construction practice.