Stochastic Scheduling for Repetitive Construction Projects

Line of Balance (LOB) method is suitable to schedule construction projects composed of repetitive activities. Since existing LOB based repetitive project scheduling methods are deterministic, they do not lend themselves to handle uncertainties involved in repetitive construction process. Indeed, existing LOB scheduling dose not handle variability of project performance indicators. In order to bridge the gap between reality and estimation, this study provides a stochastic LOB based scheduling method that allows schedulers for effectively dealing with the uncertainties of a construction project performance. The proposed method retrieves an appropriate probability distribution function (PDF) concerning project completion times, and determines favorable start times of activities. A case study is demonstrated to verify and validate the capability of the proposed method in a repetitive construction project planning.