Resource-Driven Scheduling

by Yeong W. Kim, Decision Management & Systems, Bedford, United States,



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Preparing for Construction in the 21st Century

Abstract:

As the project management techniques get applied to more and more human resource intensive projects, the topic of more effective resource planning has become one of the major issues in project planning and control. In most of computerized project management systems currently available, however, the resource management is not adequately handled. The problem stems from the fact that resource planning is handled separately from scheduling activities; first, activities are scheduled, then, resource constraints are considered. By handling otherwise closely related activity scheduling and resource planning separately in a sequential manner, project management systems quite often schedule activities in a time period even when the required resources are not available, or take too conservative an approach in scheduling activities by unnecessarily delaying the whole activity instead of just stretching out the activity (or, 'thinning out resource requirements'). This problem normally results in misinforming the project management staff on the project target schedule, and eventually leads to project delays and claims. This paper presents the Resource-Driven Scheduling (RDS) approach where the activity scheduling and resource scheduling are combined into a single process. This framework provides a flexible and comprehensive way to integrate the scheduling aspect and the resource planning aspect in project management. This approach is also a more natural and practical one in that it represents more accurately the way most project management staff think and operate.

Subject Headings: Scheduling | Resource management | Project management | Construction management | Systems management | Management methods | Computing in civil engineering

Services: Buy this book/Buy this article

 

Return to search