SIMULATED ANNEALING FOR LINEAR SCHEDULING PROJECTS WITH MULTIPLE RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS

Many construction projects such as highways, pipelines, tunnels, and high-rise buildings typically contain repetitive activities. Research has shown that the Critical Path Method (CPM) is not efficient in scheduling linear construction projects that involve repetitive tasks. Linear Scheduling Method (LSM) is one of the techniques that have been developed since 1960s to handle projects with repetitive characteristics. Although LSM has been regarded as a technique that provides significant advantages over CPM in linear construction projects, it has been mainly viewed as a graphical complement to the CPM. Studies of scheduling linear construction projects with resource consideration are rare, especially with multiple resource constraints. The objective of this proposed research is to explore a resource assignment mechanism, which assigns multiple critical resources to all activities to minimize the project duration while satisfying the activities precedence relationship and resource limitations. Resources assigned to an activity are allowed to vary within a range at different stations, which is a combinatorial optimization problem in nature. A heuristic multiple resource allocation algorithm is explored to obtain a feasible initial solution. The Simulated Annealing search algorithm is then utilized to improve the initial solution for obtaining near-optimum solutions. A housing example is studied to demonstrate the resource assignment mechanism.