Application of a Genetic Algorithm for Proactive Resilient Scheduling in Construction Projects

Abstract

During the execution of construction projects, uncertain events, such as delays, prolongations and disruptions of project activities, have the potential to cause a significant deviation between the planned and realized state of a project. As a result, progress on important project objectives can decrease and this leads to critical delays as well as heavy profit loss. For this reason, we propose the implementation of the customized evolutionary algorithm to generate resilient baseline schedules which include a sufficient number of time floats to absorb the negative impact of uncertainty. This way, the baseline solution is searched as a trade-off between project duration, its final profit and the overall baseline stability. The proposed algorithm is applied to real construction project data and the results of the analysis suggest improved stability for resilient baseline schedules. Application of the genetic algorithm to solve the existing multi-objective problem enables practical implementation of new technologies and methods in construction management. Resilient baseline schedules can be used in an uncertain environment to achieve more accurate predictions and support decision making in the areas of construction scheduling and costing.

Keywords

• genetic algorithm
• resilience
• multi-objective optimization
• construction project
• baseline schedule
• resource-constrained project scheduling problem