An Enhanced Linear Project Resource Utilization Based on Line of Balance Technique

One of the fundamental goals of utilities project management is increasing the efficiency of using resources and reducing waste. Enhancing resources utilization in linear construction projects can be achieved by levelling the project resource and/or reducing the required number of resources to accomplish the project. This might enable construction planners to address problem of resources limitations and avoid the additional costs incurred due to the poor resource management. Accordingly, this paper presents the development of a new single-objective optimization model for scheduling linear construction projects based on the line of balance technique that minimizes the required number of the needed resource for the project while maintaining the project duration. The optimal generated schedule of the developed model identifies optimal start time and optimal number of construction crews of each activity. To simplify the application of the developed methodology, a computerized model is created by optimization tool "GANetXL" in Excel. A case study adopted from the literature is analyzed to validate the developed model and to illustrate its capabilities compared to the existing ones.