Performance of Priority Rules for Finance-Based and Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Heuristics

Abstract

Over the years, the finance-based and resource-constrained project scheduling problem (FBRCPSP) has been aimed at scheduling activities and offsetting the capital gap without exceeding credit and renewable resource limits in capital-driven construction projects. However, the heuristics proposed for the FBRCPSP in previous studies neglected to focus on identifying efficient priority rules, which are understandable and intuitive for construction practitioners with different roles. Accordingly, this study explores efficient priority rules and evaluates their performance according to modified serial and parallel schedule generation scheme heuristics for the FBRCPSP. First, 11 priority rules that cover the project network, schedule, activity, and resource information are introduced, and three priority rules related to activity information are designed. Second, the two priority rule-based heuristics are applied in an example to generate multiple project schedules according to the different combinations of priority rules and heuristics. Furthermore, the performance of priority rules is tested on the metrics of project duration and profit through numerical experiments. The results show that the priority rules of the latest start time, latest finish time, and old great rank positional weight are the three best priority rules in general. Additionally, the priority rules evenly present more stable and superior results than those obtained by other priority rules for the different levels of weekly fixed overhead cost and the scenarios of contract terms. Based on the intuitive heuristics, the selected efficient priority rules assist contractors in deciding which priority rule should be applied in practice, and project managers can employ an effective priority rule to establish a baseline schedule in the initial project phase and quickly adjust the plan when it becomes infeasible for project execution. This study evaluates the performance of frequently used priority rules on finance-based and resource-constrained project scheduling heuristics in construction project management. The model and priority rule-based heuristics can be embedded into project management software or digitalized scheduling platforms in practice. Moreover, project managers can employ efficient priority rule-based heuristics to generate a desirable project schedule for mastering cash flow and resource-demand plans in the project planning stage. Intuitive priority rules are incorporated into the heuristics to quickly adjust or update schedules and financing alternatives for project management when a baseline schedule is disrupted during the project execution. In addition, practitioners can obtain more adaptive or efficient priority rules following the testing approach proposed in this work if they have rich similar project experience or big data in construction projects. In summary, this study offers construction project schedulers or managers practical scheduling strategies and approaches for addressing finance-based and resource-constrained construction projects.