Methodology for Integrated Risk Management and Proactive Scheduling of Construction Projects

An integrated methodology is developed for planning construction projects under uncertainty. The methodology relies on a computer supported risk management system that allows for the identification, analysis, and quantification of the major risk factors and the derivation of their probability of occurrence and their impact on the duration of the project activities. Using project management estimates of the marginal cost of activity starting time disruptions, a heuristic procedure is used to develop a stable proactive baseline schedule that is sufficiently protected against the anticipated disruptions that may occur during project execution and that exhibits acceptable makespan performance. We illustrate the application of the methodology on a real life construction project and demonstrate that our proactive scheduler generates baseline schedules that outperform the schedules generated by commercial software packages in terms of robustness and timely project completion probability.