Time-stepped, simulation-based scheduling system for large-scale industrial construction projects

Industrial construction projects have recently moved more towards tighter schedules and fast-tracked engineering and construction. This leads to overlap between work packages, increased occurrences of resource over-allocation and site congestion, which pose challenges to project planners in scheduling construction works and dynamically allocating resources considering the construction site conditions. Most previous research related to scheduling and resource allocation assumes that allocated resources remain consistent throughout the execution of work packages. This paper presents a workface planning system that allows for variable resource allocation and variable durations in execution of a work package, while holding logic relationships and space congestion constraints. A case study from a real industrial project is presented and results show that the proposed system reduces resource idle time as well as returns shorter project duration than traditional scheduling approaches.