Quantifying the interruption impact of activity delays in non-serial repetitive construction projects

Available scheduling models for repetitive construction projects can be classified as serial or non-serial. Serial models assume that each repetitive activity is limited to have only one predecessor and one successor, while non-serial models enable repetitive activities to have multi predecessors and successors. Activity delays in serial and non-serial repetitive projects often cause work interruptions for successor activities and project delays. This paper presents the development of a novel scheduling model for both serial and non-serial repetitive construction projects to quantify the impact of any activity delay on interrupting the crew work continuity of its successors. An application example of a repetitive construction project from the literature is analyzed to illustrate the use of the model and its computations. This analysis illustrates the novel capabilities of the model in: (1) calculating a new float to identify the duration that each activity can be delayed without causing interruption in the crew work continuity of any of its successors; and (2) quantifying the impact of unexpected activity delay on interrupting the crew work continuity of its successors. These capabilities enable construction planners to analyze and minimize the impact of unexpected activity delays on interrupting the crew work continuity of all its successors.