scholarly journals Investigating the Environmental Impacts of Construction Projects in Time-Cost Trade-Off Project Scheduling Problems with CoCoSo Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Method

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 10922
Author(s):  
Sayyid Ali Banihashemi ◽  
Mohammad Khalilzadeh ◽  
Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas ◽  
Jurgita Antucheviciene

Currently, construction projects have a significant share in environmental pollution. Usually, the employers and managers of construction projects pay attention to the project implementation with the shortest duration and the lowest cost, whereas less attention is paid to the environmental effects of the implementation of projects. Sustainable development requires the planning and implementation of construction projects, taking environmental impacts, along with other factors, into account. Few studies have investigated the balancing time, cost, and environmental effects. Although the selection of an execution method for the project activity requires the use of decision-making methods, these methods have not been used in the project scheduling problems. This study seeks to simultaneously minimize the project time, cost, and environmental impacts. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the environmental impact of project activities in three physical, biological, and social aspects throughout the construction projects, and to attempt to minimize them as measurable values. In this paper, the environmental effects of an urban water supply construction project as a real case study are assessed in different activity execution modes by the Leopold matrix and the best execution mode of each project activity is selected using the CoCoSo (combined compromise solution) multi-criteria decision-making method, considering the time–cost-environmental impact trade-off. The CoCoSo method is employed because of its high flexibility compared to other multi-criteria decision-making methods. The results of this study will direct managers and stakeholders of construction projects to pay more attention to the environmental effects of construction project activities, together with the other conventional project goals and objectives, such as the time and cost.

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 387
Author(s):  
Sayyid Ali Banihashemi ◽  
Mohammad Khalilzadeh ◽  
Jurgita Antucheviciene ◽  
Jonas Šaparauskas

The increasing number of construction projects together with the limited resources of organizations led to tough competition for achieving project goals. Time, cost, and quality have been known as the project iron triangle. Project managers attempt to allocate the appropriate resources and make the best decisions for accomplishing projects with the shortest durations, lowest costs, and the highest quality. No study has examined the time–cost–quality trade-off problem with decision-making approaches. In this study, the fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods are exploited to choose the best mode for performing each activity. For this purpose, the SWARA method is applied to determine the importance weights of time, cost, and quality. In addition, the TOPSIS (Technique for the Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) technique is used to rank and select the best activity execution modes. The proposed model is implemented on two medium- and large-size construction projects to evaluate its efficiency. Several execution modes with fuzzy duration, cost, and quality are considered for each project activity. Finally, sensitivity analysis is conducted taking three different conditions into account: the shortest duration of the execution modes, the lowest cost of the execution modes, and the highest quality of execution modes for each activity. The solution of each trade-off is compared with the solution obtained from the fuzzy SWARA–TOPSIS method. The schedule is developed according to the best execution mode for each project activity. The obtained results in two different construction projects show significant improvements in the overall project objectives so that the projects can be completed in fewer durations and costs along with higher quality. Because of the higher importance of cost, the cost of each activity is closer to the lowest cost. The activity duration is also closer to the most likely duration, and quality is closer to the high-quality level. The application of this approach can create new opportunities for research and knowledge development in the field of construction project scheduling.


2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 3089-3104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahryar Monghasemi ◽  
Mohammad Reza Nikoo ◽  
Mohammad Ali Khaksar Fasaee ◽  
Jan Adamowski

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 2287-2313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duc Hoc Tran

PurposeProject managers work to ensure successful project completion within the shortest period and at the lowest cost. One of the main tasks of a project manager in the planning phase is to generate the project time–cost curve, and furthermore, to determine the most appropriate schedule for the construction process. Numerous existing time–cost tradeoff analysis models have focused on solving a simple project representation without regarding for typical activity and project characteristics. This study aims to present a novel approach called “multiple-objective social group optimization” (MOSGO) for optimizing time–cost decisions in generalized construction projects.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, a novel MOGSO to mimic the time–cost tradeoff problem in generalized construction projects is proposed. The MOSGO has slightly modified the mechanism operation from the original algorithm to be a free-parameter algorithm and to enhance the exploring and exploiting balance in an optimization algorithm. The evidential reasoning technique is used to rank the global optimal obtained non-dominated solutions to help decision makers reach a single compromise solution.FindingsTwo case studies of real construction projects were investigated and the performance of MOSGO was compared to those of widely considered multiple-objective evolutionary algorithms. The comparison results indicated that the MOSGO approach is a powerful, efficient and effective tool in finding the time–cost curve. In addition, the multi-criteria decision-making approaches were applied to identify the best schedule for project implementation.Research limitations/implicationsAccordingly, the first major practical contribution of the present research is that it provides a tool for handling real-world construction projects by considering all types of construction project. The second important implication of this study derives from research finding on the hybridization multiple-objective and multi-criteria techniques to help project managers in facilitating the time–cost tradeoff (TCT) problems easily. The third implication stems from the wide-range application of the proposed model TCT.Practical implicationsThe model can be used in early stages of the construction process to help project managers in selecting an appropriate plan for whole project lifecycle.Social implicationsThe proposal model can be applied to multi-objective contexts in diversified fields. Moreover, the model is also a useful reference for future research.Originality/valueThis paper makes contributions to extant literature by: introducing a method for making TCT models applicable to actual projects by considering general activity precedence relations; developing a novel MOSGO algorithm to solving TCT problems in multi-objective context by a single simulation; and facilitating the TCT problems to project managers by using multi-criteria decision-making approaches.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Ammar Alzarrad ◽  
Gary P. Moynihan ◽  
Muhammad T. Hatamleh ◽  
Siyuan Song

As is often the case in project scheduling, when the project duration is shortened to decrease total cost, the total float is lost resulting in added critical or nearly critical activities. This, in turn, results in decreasing the probability of completing the project on time and increases the risk of schedule delays. To solve this problem, this research developed a fuzzy multicriteria decision-making (FMCDM) model. The objective of this model is to help project managers improve their decisions regarding time-cost-risk trade-offs (TCRTO) in construction projects. In this model, an optimization algorithm based on fuzzy logic and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been used to analyze the time-cost-risk trade-off alternatives and select the best one based on selected criteria. The algorithm was implemented in the MATLAB software and applied to two case studies to verify and validate the presented model. The presented FMCDM model could help produce a more reliable schedule and mitigate the risk of projects running overbudget or behind schedule. Further, this model is a powerful decision-making instrument to help managers reduce uncertainties and improve the accuracy of time-cost-risk trade-offs. The presented FMCDM model employed fuzzy linguistic terms, which provide decision-makers with the opportunity to give their judgments as intervals comparing to fixed value judgments. In conclusion, the presented FMCDM model has high robustness, and it is an attractive alternative to the traditional methods to solve the time-cost-risk trade-off problem in construction.


Author(s):  
S. A. Banihashemi ◽  
Mohammad Khalilzadeh ◽  
A. Shahraki ◽  
M. Rostami Malkhalifeh ◽  
S. S. R. Ahmadizadeh

2012 ◽  
Vol 433-440 ◽  
pp. 5746-5752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadi Mokhtari ◽  
Ali Salmasnia ◽  
Mahdi Bastan

Time, cost and quality are crucial aspects of each project and tradeoff among them is important for improvement of the overall performance of industrial and construction projects. In this paper we suggest that the quality is added into the traditional time-cost trade-off problem (TCTP) and develop a three dimensional time, cost and quality trade-off problem (TCQTP) with some realistic assumptions. To the best of our knowledge this problem has not been extensively treated in literature yet. In order to deal with the suggested stochastic TCQTP, a statistical robust solution method is adapted in which not only the correlations among objectives are considered but also the variance of objectives is minimized. A computational study on an illustrative example is done and the results support the applicability and reliability of the suggested model.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 322-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duc-Hoc Tran ◽  
Jui-Sheng Chou ◽  
Duc-Long Luong

Time-cost problems that arise in repetitive construction projects are commonly encountered in project scheduling. Numerous time-cost trade-off approaches, such as mathematical, metaheuristic, and evolutionary methods, have been extensively studied in the construction community. Currently, the scheduling of a repetitive project is conducted using the traditional precedence diagramming method (PDM), which has two fundamental limitations: (1) progress is assumed to be linear from start to finish; and (2) activities in the schedule are connected each other only at the end points. This paper proposes a scheduling method that allows the use of continuous precedence relationships and piece-wise linear and nonlinear activity-time-production functions that are described by the use of singularity functions. This work further develops an adaptive multiple objective symbiotic organisms search (AMOSOS) algorithm that modifies benefit factors in the basic SOS to balance exploration and exploitation processes. Two case studies of its application are analyzed to validate the scheduling method, as well as to demonstrate the capabilities of AMOSOS in generating solutions that optimally trade-off minimizing project time with minimizing the cost of non-unit repetitive projects. The results thus obtained indicate that the proposed model is feasible and effective relative to the basic SOS algorithm and other state-of-the-art algorithms.


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