Resource Levelling with Float Consumption Rate

Abstract

The use of an appropriate scheduling method is not sufficient in constructing a reliable schedule. The management of resources is as important as the scheduling method. Inefficiency in managing resources may bring about severe delays as well as cost overruns caused by resource shortages in some cases and/or idle resources in others. Therefore, resources should be utilized efficiently in order to prevent project failures. Resource leveling is one of the approaches that are used for the management of resources. The goal of resource leveling is to minimize fluctuations, peaks and valleys in resource utilization without changing the completion time of a project and the number of resources required. Although the main principle behind traditional resource leveling is achieving an even flow of resources while the original project duration remains unchanged, it is possible to develop a more efficient model that discriminates among the activities that are selected for participation in resource leveling. For this purpose, a model was developed that considers the float consumption rates of activities. The float consumption rate is the percentage that is set to determine the maximum amount of float which will be consumed to shift the start time of the activity. The proposed model allows the scheduler to assign float consumption rates to each activity that can be used during the resource leveling procedure. When the required information is input, the proposed model automatically changes the required daily resources as it shifts the non-critical activities along their available total float times. The proposed model is expected to minimize the likelihood of severe delay and cost overrun. The model is demonstrated on an illustrative example by constructing a network and its resource utilization histograms. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Budapest University of Technology and Economics & Diamond Congress Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2019.