Construction projects are amongst the most complex challenges that humans face. Any construction project has thousands of activities, hundreds of workers and equipment, dozens of contractors… the complexity is simply unmanageable. Yet, we rely on planning teams to try to find manually the best way to do those 1000s of activities. We basically ask them to find the best option amongst millions of possible options to develop a construction schedule. What are the chances of this happening?
Simple questions, difficult to answer
Scheduling in itself is a difficult exercise. It takes weeks to develop a schedule. If on top of this, teams want to evaluate different options, analyse what-if scenarios or introduce changes, the effort required is tremendous. Even questions as simple as:
How much time can we gain by bringing in 1 extra crew?
We planned for 8 welders but are only able to bring in 5 this week, where best to deploy them to maximize progress?
Based on actual field progress, which activities should be prioritized?
With current tools it takes planners hours if not days to answer these. Simply because CPM scheduling software requires the users to manually introduce all the data.
The role of AI in construction scheduling
Artificial Intelligence combined with super-fast optimization algorithms can run, within minutes, through the millions of possible combinations of doing the thousands of activities of the project, modifying resources, re-sequencing activities, moving around crews, etc and find the best options.
The only data required is a list of activities, a list of resources and the logic to do these activities.
What is the benefit?
Any planning team developing a construction schedule can easily and quickly compare it against all possible ways to execute that set of activities. Even better, find better options with a shorter duration, less or better allocated resources or lower cost. Basically ensuring that the best schedule for the project is always developed, eliminating all the guess work and the long hours.
If you want to learn more about using AI for construction scheduling reach to us!