Robust Project Scheduling is to review the fundamentals of robust project scheduling through the deployment of proactive/reactive project scheduling procedures.

This title presents a large variety of models and algorithms dedicated to the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP), which aims at scheduling at minimal duration a set of activities subject to precedence constraints and limited resource availabilities. In the first part, the standard variant of RCPSP is presented and analyzed as a combinatorial optimization problem. Constraint programming and integer linear programming formulations are given. Relaxations based on these formulations and also on related scheduling problems are presented. Exact methods and heuristics are surveyed. Computational experiments, aiming at providing an empirical insight on the difficulty of the problem, are provided. The second part of the book focuses on several other variants of the RCPSP and on their solution methods. Each variant takes account of real-life characteristics which are not considered in the standard version, such as possible interruptions of activities, production and consumption of resources, cost-based approaches and uncertainty considerations. The last part presents industrial case studies where the RCPSP plays a central part. Applications are presented in various domains such as assembly shop and rolling ingots production scheduling, project management in information technology companies and instruction scheduling for VLIW processor architectures.

This book surveys the current state-of-the-art in operations research. The book summarizes the current developments and theoretical achievements in the field, including project uncertainty and grid resource management. It further covers the range of the key models in the field, including deterministic, probabilistic, single- and multi-mode, single- and multi-objective, and a general model on discrete-continuous resources.

A project planning and decision support model is developed and applied to identify and reduce risk and uncertainty in deconstruction project planning. It allows calculating building inventories based on sensor information and construction standards and it computes robust project plans for different scenarios with multiple modes, constrained renewable resources and locations. A reactive and flexible planning element is proposed in the case of schedule infeasibility during project execution.

Due to the increasing importance of product differentiation and collapsing product life cycles, a growing number of value-adding activities in the industry and service sector are organized in projects. Projects come in many forms, often taking considerable time and consuming a large amount of resources. The management and scheduling of projects represents a challenging task and project performance may have a considerable impact on an organization's competitiveness. This handbook presents state-of-the-art approaches to project management and scheduling. More than sixty contributions written by leading experts in the field provide an authoritative survey of recent developments. The book serves as a comprehensive reference, both, for researchers and project management professionals. The handbook consists of two volumes. Volume 1 is devoted to single-modal and multi-modal project scheduling. Volume 2 presents multi-project problems, project scheduling under uncertainty and vagueness, managerial approaches and a separate part on applications, case studies and information systems.

This textbook teaches the basic concepts and methods of project management but also explains how to convert them to useful results in practice. Project management offers a promising working area for theoretical and practical applications, and developing software and decision support systems (DSS). This book specifically focuses on project planning and control, with an emphasis on mathematical modeling. Models and algorithms establish a good starting point for students to study the relevant literature and support pursuing academic work in related fields. The book provides an introduction to theoretical concepts, and it also provides detailed explanations, application examples, and case studies that deal with real-life problems. The chapter topics include questions that underlie critical thinking, interpretation, analytics, and making comparisons. Learning outcomes are defined and the content of the book is structured following these goals. Chapter 1 begins by introducing the basic concepts, methods, and processes of project management. This Chapter constitutes the base for defining and modeling project management problems. Chapter 2 explores the fundamentals of organizing and managing projects from an organization’s perspective. Issues related to project team formation, the role of project managers, and organization types are discussed. Chapter 3 is devoted to project planning and network modeling of projects, covering fundamental concepts such as project scope, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS), Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS), project network modeling, activity duration, and cost estimating, activity-based costing (ABC), data and knowledge management. Chapter 4 introduces deterministic scheduling models, which can be used in constructing the time schedules. Models employing time-based and finance-based objectives are introduced. The CPM is covered. The unconstrained version of maximizing Net Present Value (NPV) is also treated here together with the case of time-dependent cash flows. Chapter 5 focuses on the time/cost trade-off problem, explaining how to reduce the duration of some of the activities and therefore reduce the project duration at the expense of additional costs. This topic is addressed for both continuous and discrete cases. Chapter 6 discusses models and methods of scheduling under uncertain activity durations. PERT is introduced for minimizing the expected project duration and extended to the PERT-Costing method for minimizing the expected project cost. Simulation is presented as another approach for dealing with the uncertainty in activity durations and costs. To demonstrate the use of the PERT, a case study on constructing an earthquake-resistant residential house is presented. Classifications of resource and schedule types are given in Chapter 7, and exact and heuristic solution procedures for the single- and multi-mode resource constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) are presented. The objective of maximizing NPV under resource constraints is addressed, and the capital-constrained project scheduling model is introduced. In Chapter 8, resource leveling, and further resource management problems are introduced. Total adjustment cost and resource availability cost problems are introduced. Various exact models are investigated. A heuristic solution procedure for the resource leveling problem is presented in detail. Also, resource portfolio management policies and the resource portfolio management problem are discussed. A case study on resource leveling dealing with the annual audit project of a major corporation is presented. Project contract types and payment schedules constitute the topics of Chapter 9. Contracts are legal documents reflecting the results of some form of client-contractor negotiations and sometimes of a bidding process, which deserve closer attention. Identification and allocation of risk in contracts, project control issues, disputes, and resolution management are further topics covered in this Chapter. A bidding model is presented to investigate client-contractor negotiations and the bidding process from different aspects. Chapter 10 focuses on processes and methods for project monitoring and control. Earned Value Management is studied to measure the project performance throughout the life of a project and to estimate the expected project time and cost based on the current status of the project. How to incorporate inflation into the analysis is presented. In Chapter 11, qualitative and quantitative techniques including decision trees, simulation, and software applications are introduced. Risk phases are defined and building a risk register is addressed. An example risk breakdown structure is presented. The design of risk management processes is introduced, and risk response planning strategies are discussed. At the end of the Chapter, the quantitative risk analysis is demonstrated at the hand of a team discussion case study. Chapter 12 covers several models and approaches dealing with various stochastic aspects of the decision environment. Stochastic models, generation of robust schedules, use of reactive and fuzzy approaches are presented. Sensitivity and scenario analysis are introduced. Also, simulation analysis, which is widely used to analyze the impacts of uncertainty on project goals, is presented. Chapter 13 addresses repetitive projects that involve the production or construction of similar units in batches such as railway cars or residential houses. Particularly in the construction industry repetitive projects represent a large portion of the work accomplished in this sector of the economy. A case study on the 50 km section of a motorway project is used for demonstrating the handling of repetitive project management. How best to select one or more of a set of candidate projects to maintain a project portfolio is an important problem for project-based organizations with limited resources. The project selection problem is inherently a multi-objective problem and is treated as such in Chapter 14. Several models and solution techniques are introduced. A multi-objective, multi-period project selection and scheduling model is presented. A case study that addresses a project portfolio selection and scheduling problem for the construction of a set of dams in a region is presented. Finally, Chapter 15 discusses three promising research areas in project management in detail: (i) Sustainability and Project Management, (ii) Project Management in the Era of Big Data, and (iii) the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the New Age Project Management. We elaborate on the importance of sustainability in project management practices, discuss how developments in data analytics might impact project life cycle management, and speculate how the infinite possibilities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the new technologies will transform project management practices.

An easy-to-follow guide to the theory and practice of project scheduling and control No matter how large or small the construction project, an efficient, well-thought-out schedule is crucial to achieving success. The schedule manages all aspects of a job, such as adjusting staff requirements at various stages, overseeing materials deliveries and equipment needs, organizing inspections, and estimating time needs for curing and settling—all of which requires a deep understanding on the part of the scheduler. Written by a career construction professional, Construction Project Scheduling and Control, Second Edition has been fully revised with up-to-date coverage detailing all the steps needed to devise a technologically advanced schedule geared toward streamlining the construction process. Solved and unsolved exercises reinforce learning, while an overview of industry standard computer software sets the tone for further study. Some of the features in this Second Edition include: Focus on precedence networks as a viable solution to scheduling, the main part of project control The concepts of Dynamic Minimal Lag, a new CPM technique developed by the author A new chapter on schedule risk management By combining basic fundamentals with advanced techniques alongside the robust analysis of theory to enhance real-world applications, Construction Project Scheduling and Control is an ideal companion for students and professionals looking to formulate a schedule for a time-crunched industry in need of better ways to oversee projects.

Project management has become a widespread instrument enabling organizations to efficiently master the challenges of steadily shortening product life cycles, global markets and decreasing profit margins. With projects increasing in size and complexity, their planning and control represents one of the most crucial management tasks. This is especially true for scheduling, which is concerned with establishing execution dates for the sub-activities to be performed in order to complete the project. The ability to manage projects where resources must be allocated between concurrent projects or even sub-activities of a single project requires the use of commercial project management software packages. However, the results yielded by the solution procedures included are often rather unsatisfactory. Scheduling of Resource-Constrained Projects develops more efficient procedures, which can easily be integrated into software packages by incorporated programming languages, and thus should be of great interest for practitioners as well as scientists working in the field of project management. The book is divided into two parts. In Part I, the project management process is described and the management tasks to be accomplished during project planning and control are discussed. This allows for identifying the major scheduling problems arising in the planning process, among which the resource-constrained project scheduling problem is the most important. Part II deals with efficient computer-based procedures for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem and its generalized version. Since both problems are NP-hard, the development of such procedures which yield satisfactory solutions in a reasonable amount of computation time is very challenging, and a number of new and very promising approaches are introduced. This includes heuristic procedures based on priority rules and tabu search as well as lower bound methods and branch and bound procedures which can be applied for computing optimal solutions.

Project scheduling problems are, generally speaking, the problems of allocating scarce resources over time to perform a given set of activities. The resources are nothing other than the arbitrary means which activities complete for. Also the activities can have a variety of interpretations. Thus, project scheduling problems appear in a large spectrum of real-world situations, and, in consequence, they have been intensively studied for almost fourty years. Almost a decade has passed since the multi-author monograph: R. Slowinski, 1. W~glarz (eds. ), Advances in Project Scheduling, Elsevier, 1989, summarizing the state-of-the-art across project scheduling problems, was published. Since then, considerable progress has been made in all directions of modelling and finding solutions to these problems. Thus, the proposal by Professor Frederick S. Hillier to edit a handbook which reports on the recent advances in the field came at an exceptionally good time and motivated me to accept the challenge. Fortunately, almost all leading experts in the field have accepted my invitation and presented their completely new advances often combined with expository surveys. Thanks to them, the handbook stands a good chance of becoming a key reference point on the current state-of-the-art in project scheduling, as well as on new directions in the area. The contents are divided into four parts. The first one, dealing with classical models -exact algorithms, is preceded by a proposition of the classification scheme for scheduling problems.