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 ABSTRACT

Major construction firms involved in multiple projects within one time frame, are usually with the challenge of allocating different resource classes among these projects. To retain business profitability, maintaining optimum resource allocation on present and future construction work must be systematically estimated. This paper demonstrates the application artificial intelligence search technique entitled Genetic Algorithm (GA), which can provide assistance to construction managers in computing optimum resource levels that have maintained by a construction firm involved in multiple construction projects. The paper discusses the concepts, procedures and search capabilities of genetic algorithms. The paper then demonstrates the application of a genetic algorithm in allocating multiple resources, namely multi-labor trades, into multiple construction projects. Deviations of the labor requirement from labor allocation, which are influenced by labor wage rate, overtime rate, of the project and constrained by certain operational constraints such as the amount of labour allowed to work in a project site and maximum amount of labor allowed to be hired for each trade etc., have been formulated as the objective function to be minimized by the genetic algorithm. The paper concludes with a discussion on the lessons learned from this implementation.