Scheduling system with focus on practical concerns in repetitive projects

The line of balance (LOB) method has long been used to model construction projects with repetitive units. Critics, however, indicate two major shortcomings of applying LOB in the construction industry: (1) it has not yet been adapted to numerical computation as readily as network methods; and (2) it relies on restrictive assumptions and therefore cannot treat the practical concerns concluded in this paper. To treat all the practical concerns and provide necessary calculation power, a new scheduling system is proposed: the Repetitive Scheduling Method (RSM) and its computerized implementation, Repetitive Project Planner (RP2). RSM includes necessary modelling elements (i.e. activity and relationship types) and a set of computational algorithm to calculate the start time of every activity as well as the minimum project duration. RP2 automatically calculates and generates RSM diagrams that are particularly useful in serving as a test-bed for project managers to perform what-if analyses for different crew utilization strategies. A real-life pipeline project is used to demonstrate the application of RP2 and to compare that with the critical path method (CPM) and traditional LOB models.