Resource-driven scheduling of repetitive activities

Repetitive activities are found commonly in the construction of high-rise buildings, pipeline networks and highway and housing projects. Construction crews assigned to these activities often perform the work sequentially, moving from one repetitive unit in the project to the next. Because of this frequent crew movement, construction of repetitive activities should be scheduled in such a way as to enable prompt movement of crews among the repetitive units so as to minimize idle crew time. In order to maximize the efficiency of crew utilization, the schedule of repetitive activities should be resource driven, and should satisfy the crew work continuity constraint in addition to precedence relationships and crew availability constraints. This paper presents a flexible algorithm for resource-driven scheduling of repetitive activities that satisfies the three constraints, and considers the impact of a number of practical factors encountered commonly during the construction of this class of projects. The algorithm is applied in two stages: the first achieves compliance with logical precedence relationships and crew availability constraints, and the second achieves compliance with the crew work continuity constraint. A numerical example of a highway project is analysed to illustrate the use of the algorithm and demonstrate its capabilities.