Browsing by Author "Hama Faraj Ahmed Ahmed, Ary"
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Item GENETIC-ALGORITHM-BASED OPTIMIZATION APPROACH FOR TIME COST TRADE-OFF PROBLEM WITH GENERALIZED PRECEDENCE RELATIONSHIPS(2022-01-21) Hama Faraj Ahmed Ahmed, Ary; Aminbakhsh, SamanDecreasing the overall cost of a project through reductions in its duration can be considered as one of the main goals of any construction project. Shortening the duration can be achieved by accelerating the construction project by utilization of more efficient construction techniques; that is, by allocation of additional and/or more productive resources. However, expedition of the project schedule will obviously incur extra costs due to implementation of high-price construction techniques. Meanwhile, this reduction of time might be plausible only up to a certain limit. Stemming from the highly challenging nature of this trade-off between the overall cost and the duration of the projects, still no planning software package provides any features for tackling it. The lack of such functionality has encouraged development of numerous optimization algorithm by several researchers for achieving a compromise between the conflicting objectives of time and cost. Despite a great deal of effort, a large body of literature ignore the various types of precedence relationships which are frequently incorporated in practice. In this thesis a Simulated Annealing-based Genetic Algorithm is proposed for solution of this optimization problem which is referred to as the time-cost trade-off problem (TCTP) in the construction context. The proposed hybrid GA is designed to ensure fast convergence without sacrificing the quality of the solutions found. The proposed optimization method is capable of solving TCTPs with generalized precedence relationships with realistic overlapping of activities. Performance of the hybrid GA proposed herein is tested over a wide range of frequently used problems and the results are compared with various existing methods. Practicality of this algorithm is also validated by fitting the model to a large-scale real-case construction project. As a result of validation, the utility of the proposed algorithm is illustrated which also highlights how it can help both the client and the contractor in speeding up the project without exceeding the budget.