Product modelling to support case-based construction planning and scheduling

Abstract

Many human schedulers create schedules by reusing past similar schedules. The retrieval and reuse of similar schedules are subjective and experience-based. This paper explores different notions of similarity required when performing different scheduling tasks. It describes the CasePlan system that helps schedulers retrieve and reuse parts of existing schedules based on a generic product model, and apply case-based reasoning to generate new schedules. The validation experiment demonstrated CasePlan's accuracy in determining individual subnetworks and activity durations, but weak performance in determining interlinks between subnetworks, which highly depends upon the availability of pertinent cases and the level of detail of project information. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.