The development of a robust resource constrained project scheduling framework

Resource constrained scheduling attempts to schedule projects with deterministic activity durations subject to various objective functions and additional assumptions. During project execution, however, a project may be subject to considerable uncertainty. Such uncertainty may lead to the realised activity duration to deviate from the durations that were estimated in the baseline schedule and cause a serious project overdue. This paper provides a whole robust project scheduling strategy, which is tolerant to various uncertainties. A framework combines the buffer sizing technique, proactive project scheduling approach, and reactive project scheduling approach. The various buffer sizing techniques, proactive project scheduling approaches and reactive project scheduling approaches are investigated. The proposed scheduling framework constructed based on these approaches is tested using a large experimental design in order to detect the effectiveness of each procedure. Knowing the characteristics of each approach enables project managers to identify the appropriate scheduling methodology for different project scheduling environments.