Methodology for enhancing reliability of predictive project schedules in construction

Construction projects consist in providing new built facilities as well as in maintaining the existing building stock. Reliability engineering in construction encompasses all stages of the structure’s life cycle from the earliest concept of the project to decommissioning. The project planning and design stages are aimed at selecting or creating technical and organisational solutions to assure that the built facility meets the sponsor’s and the user’s requirements; these requirements regulate also the construction process. The result of planning the construction process should be a reliable schedule – immune to disruptive effects of random occurrences, so assuring high probability of the actual processes meeting their predefined deadlines. A practical method of scheduling construction projects should enable the planner to generate schedules resistant to random occurrences, making them reliable so that the users can meet deadlines. The paper presents a proactive methodology for generating construction schedules of enhanced reliability. The methodology covers two fundamental stages. The first stage is a construction duration risk assessment based on a multi-attribute evaluation of operating conditions. The second stage is the allocation of time buffers. An original methodology supporting decisions at each stage is put forward, namely a methodology for evaluating process duration risk level, defining significance of operating conditions, estimating dispersion of process durations, and defining criticality of processes in the schedule. The author proposes a set of measures of schedule robustness to serve as surrogate criteria in the schedule instability cost minimization problem and buffer sizing. The proposed way of allowing for risk and uncertainty in creating reliable schedules is argued to be efficient in protecting the project completion date, as well as stage or even process start dates, against disruptions.