Time Planning for Construction Projects: Conceptual Developments

Abstract

Time planning passes through four conceptual development stages. These are Bar Chart, Network Diagram, Resources Constrained Project Scheduling (RCPS) and Time Planning under Uncertainty. Recent developments acknowledged uncertainties in time planning and categorized them in four major factors. They are Uncertainties of Detailing of Activities, Estimating Activity Durations, Resources Dependencies, and Task Dependencies specifically Merge Event Biases (MEB). As a result, CPM, PERT, Mathematical and Heuristic
models, Monte Carlo Simulation, Successive Principles and Theory of Constraints (TOC) are developed for Time planning approaches. This paper tries to review these conceptual developments for use in Practical applications and for R&D.

Keywords: Time planning, CPM, PERT, MCS, Successive Principle, Theory of Constraints

African Research Review Vol. 2 (4) 2008: pp. 88-112