The LP/IP hybrid method for construction time-cost trade-off analysis

Abstract

Construction planners face the decisions of selecting appropriate resources, including crew sizes, equipment, methods and technologies, to perform the tasks of a construction project. In general, there is a trade-off between time and cost to complete a task - the less expensive the resources, the longer it takes. Using Critical Path Method (CPM) techniques, the overall project cost can be reduced by using less expensive resources for non-critical activities without impacting the duration. Furthermore, planners need to adjust the resource selections to shorten or lengthen the project duration. Finding the optimal decisions is difficult and time-consuming considering the numbers of permutations involved. For example, a CPM network with only eight activities, each with two options, will have 28 alternatives. For large problems, exhaustive enumeration is not economically feasible even with very fast computers. This paper presents a new algorithm using linear and integer programming to obtain optimal resource selections efficiently that optimize time/cost of a construction project.

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