Application of Linear Techniques to Project Plan and Scheduling for Highway Construction

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INTRODUCTION

Highway construction scheduling and planning is a complex process. For any person involved in Highway construction project, the intimate knowledge of construction methods, materials, equipment, and historical production rates is a very important factor. My personal knowledge and experience has helped me in planning several projects for construction of highways. I have realized that good scheduling of projects takes into account the economies that can be realized by conducting multiple activities concurrently. Planning a highway project must take into account the impact of weather, labor relations, subcontractor qualifications and productivity, material availability, and a host of other factors.

Crucial to the successful outcome of any major highway construction and reconstruction projects is the ability to accurately plan, predict and control the construction process. Budget control, resource allocation and consequential impacts are some of the important factors that a scheduler needs to keep in mind while planning a highway construction project. Today, highway constructors need sophisticated project management tools to achieve their project goals on time. Project scheduling has tremendously helped constructors building construction for the past 20 to 30 years. However, traditional scheduling techniques used by buildings contractors cannot be applied to highway construction as the activities involved in highway construction are fundamentally different than those typically found on a building project.

My personal experience in dealing with several highway projects in the past has revealed that typical highway construction/rehabilitation projects should be linear activities. This research work shows that current...

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