Resource Leveling in Construction Projects

Abstract Management of the resources carries an indispensable importance for profitability and scheduling of construction projects. By their nature, construction projects require different sets of skills, equipment and materials during different stages of the process. Furthermore, the demand for amount of distinct assets fluctuates greatly depending to the project stage. Resource Leveling, also known as Resource Smoothing, shows interest in eliminating resource shortages and abundances by having a more optimized project schedule with regards to the utilization of the resources. The goals of the Resource Leveling are eliminating delays, failures and cost overruns, without interfering with the project’s scope, cost and time constraints. In Resource Leveling, the project duration, number of the resources and the completion date remains unchanged. It is assumed that the project has been provided sufficiently. Resource Leveling is closely tied to the project scheduling methods such as Critical Path Method (CPM) and Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), which are predominantly used in construction industry. Usually, Resource Leveling is coupled with one them. Whereas, these scheduling techniques are interested in critical tasks and their connections to each other for completion of the project, they fail foreseeing any failures due to shortcomings. Resource Leveling takes advantage of float and moves tasks around in timetable with an eye on resources. Coming up with more efficient solutions for more balanced use is an area that has been attracting interest. For this purpose, various methods, algorithms and objective functions have been developed. The users have opportunity to select between them according to their project in order to achieve best results.