Resource Allocation and Leveling in Construction Management Projects with Resource Histogram

Abstract

Resource allocation and leveling in construction management projects have been an enthusiastic subject to plenty of researchers since the advancement of the scheduling techniques. Many researchers have studied various versions of the benchmark resource leveling and allocation optimization problems using various scheduling techniques. However, in this study, a straightforward scheduling technique called resource histogram is utilized to allocate and level the available resources. Moreover, the maximum number of resources at peak time is considered as a significant aspect of the case study. Since peak demand isn’t a preferred by the contractor. The effects of resources are also examined in order to demonstrate the variation of the total duration of the project which provides flexibility to decision-makers in making intelligent decisions regarding the use of the resources. Thereby, a construction project with seven activities taken from the technical literature is examined with constrained as well as unconstrained conditions using Microsoft Excel. However, task scheduling is performed using critical path method (CPM). The results indicate that limitation on resources significantly affect the performance and cause the project to be extended beyond the scheduled duration. Moreover, besides renewable, non-renewable resources (e.g., cost demand) may also be significant parameters and this extension can be considered in future research.