Resource constrained project scheduling by harmony search algorithm

• Published in: KSCE journal of civil engineering Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 479 - 487
• Main Authors: Giran, Omer, Temur, Rasim, Bekdaş, Gebrail
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul Korean Society of Civil Engineers 01.02.2017; Springer Nature B.V; 대한토목학회
• Subjects: Civil Engineering; Computer programs; Constraints; Construction; Construction industry; Contractors; Design Optimization and Applications in Civil Engineering; Engineering; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Heuristic methods; Industrial Pollution Prevention; Leveling; Polynomials; Project engineering; Project management; Resource management; Resource scheduling; Search algorithms; Search methods; Software; 토목공학; construction management; harmony search; scheduling; resource leveling; optimization
• ISSN: 1226-7988; 1976-3808
• DOI: 10.1007/s12205-017-1363-6

The construction industry is nonhomogeneous and also managing construction projects are more difficult in today’s world. Construction projects are huge and contractors want to accomplish them within a short time in this fast changing era. Therefore, the time and resource have to be managed for a successful construction project management. Resource leveling is one of the primary tools used for managing resources. The target is leveling the resources within a minimum time period to complete the project successfully. Resource constrained project scheduling problems (RCPSP) are a Non-deterministic Polynomial-time hard (NP-hard) problem therefore heuristic methods can be used to solve it. This paper presents a harmony search method for solving the RCPSP. In order to compare the performance of the developed software three examples were chosen from the literature. Computational results indicate that the harmony search method is more effective, rapid and suitable for the RCPSP than existing solutions.