Multi-objective Workforce Allocation in Construction Projects

Andrew Iskandar, Richard Allmendinger

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

Managing construction projects is a complex, resource-intense and risky task that involves the organization and management of people skilled in the design and completion of construction projects. Embarking on a construction project means to plan the allocation of resources and labour, while ensuring that the output (e.g. a new building) meets a certain quality, and is delivered in time and within budget without breaching contractual obligations. We formulate a simplified version of this task as a constrained multi-objective optimization problem, and then use a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm to tackle the problem. In addition to providing a formal definition of the problem, further contributions of this work include the validation of the methodology using real data of construction projects varying in scale and resource-utilisation; the use of real data is scarce in the construction project management area. We also perform a scenario-based analysis to understand how the approach reacts to changing environmental parameters (such as availability of resources). Finally, we discuss practical implications. Our empirical analysis highlights that the proposed approach improves significantly in terms of project budget, quality, and duration targets, when compared with the industry standard.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
EditorsPedro A. Castillo, Juan Luis Jiménez Laredo
PublisherSpringer Nature
Pages50-64
Number of pages15
ISBN (Print)9783030726980
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Event24th International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation, EvoApplications 2021 held as Part of EvoStar 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 7 Apr 20219 Apr 2021

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume12694 LNCS

Conference

Conference24th International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation, EvoApplications 2021 held as Part of EvoStar 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period7/04/219/04/21

Keywords

  • Construction project management
  • Evolutionary algorithms
  • Multi-objective optimization
  • Resource allocation
  • Workforce allocation

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