Time-Cost Trade-Off by Lead-Time Adjustment in the PDM Network

Since the late 1980s, the schedule technique applied to the construction industry around the world has rapidly changed from the traditional ADM (Arrow Diagramming Method) to the PDM (Precedence Diagramming Method) technique. The main reason for this change is to overcome the limits and inconveniences of the traditional ADM technique. The time-cost trade-off is one of the core scheduling techniques to establish the best optimized combination plan in terms of a relationship between the cost and schedule. However, most of the schedule-related textbooks and research papers have discussed and proposed applications of a time-cost trade-off technique based only on the Finish to Start relationship. Therefore, there are almost no consideration and discussion of problems or restrictions that emerge when the time-cost trade-off technique is applied to the PDM network that has overlapping relationships. This paper proposes the lead-time adjustment method as a methodology for overcoming some restrictions that are encountered when the time-cost trade-off technique is applied to the overlapping relationships of the PDM network.