Civil Engineering and Architecture Vol. 10(3), pp. 963 - 975
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.100316
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Enhanced Heuristic Method for Scheduling and Leveling Using Heuristic Indices

Osama Adnan Nasrallah ^*, Rami A. Maher
Faculty of Engineering, Isra University, 11622, Amman, Jordan

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an enhanced heuristic method based on five major heuristic indices used in project scheduling and leveling. Many researchers used some of these indices in project management, but few researchers combined multiple indices and used them in scheduling and leveling. The main purpose of this work is to find which of the five indices is the most important in leveling resources using the proposed method where the five heuristic indices were used together, and the method was applied using MATLAB software. The five heuristic indices are: Resource moment about the x-axis (), Resource moment on the y-axis (), Rate of Resource usage (), Resource Improvement Coefficient (RIC), and the Maximum Value of the used resource (). Moreover, every index has weight, which is referred to as importance weight. The method was tested on two projects. One of them is a hypothetical project consisting of 24 activities, and the other is an actual project where every index had an extremely bigger weight compared with the others. Also, a parameter () which refers to a partial value of the total float for the noncritical activities was used to enhance the heuristic method. It is found that the best () which gave the best possible resource histogram in the first project was =1.0 and =0.87 for the second. Also, it is found that the resource improvement coefficient () is the most important for the first project, while for the second project the Rate of Resource usage () was more important and gave better results. However, changing the value of () gave different results that are not related to a fixed relationship in terms of its increase or decrease. Finally, choosing the most important index depends on the nature of the project and its resources.

KEYWORDS
Resource Leveling, Heuristic Indices, Resource Improvement Coefficient, Resource Moments, Resource Rate

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Osama Adnan Nasrallah , Rami A. Maher , "Enhanced Heuristic Method for Scheduling and Leveling Using Heuristic Indices," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 963 - 975, 2022. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.100316.

(b). APA Format:
Osama Adnan Nasrallah , Rami A. Maher (2022). Enhanced Heuristic Method for Scheduling and Leveling Using Heuristic Indices. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 10(3), 963 - 975. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.100316.