Automated schedule generation

Abstract

Even for the most well-intentioned companies, the commitment required for the initial drafting of a plan is a real barrier to developing a useful schedule for a construction project. This paper explores how artificial intelligence and expert systems have and can be used for automating the generation of plans and schedules. Findings from a thorough literature review and observations about the general characteristics of projects provide a backdrop to explain the reasoning that has led to the authors' approach to developing a module capable of generating draft plans and schedules. This approach combines expert systems with large building blocks of predefined project scoping, sequencing, and scaling knowledge contained in standard templates and rules. It relies on templates to store much of the reasoning needed to produce a project plan and schedule, and on the use of generalized planning structures as activities. A draft schedule can then be automatically generated by way of a relatively simple rule set that assigns activity property values dealing with physical locations and production rates, as well as other project scale related values. The role of a physical model or view of a project is emphasised.Key words: construction, scheduling, project management, expert system, template, automated schedule generation, rule based, computer integration.