METHOD FOR OPTIMIZING SCHEDULE COMPRESSION IN PROJECTS USING ACCELERATING AND OVERLAPPING OF ACTIVITIES

摘要

This innovation is in the field of project management and project controls systems for use in compressing projects schedules. Compressing project schedule requires additional cost for more resources, when activities are accelerated, or to cover the resulted rework when activities are overlapped. This causes schedule compression costlier than normal execution. However, there are benefits associated with schedule compression as well. This creates a trade-off between costs and benefits of schedule compression. Performing this trade-off in real industrial projects is very time consuming due to the large number of possible solutions. An innovative algorithm and computer tool is designed and developed to provide optimum degree of accelerating and overlapping of activities in projects. The developed algorithm provides the best or close to the best schedule compression strategy that offers maximum benefit and minimum duration in projects. The algorithm and computer tool are developed using evolutionary optimization techniques to optimize the solutions.