Automated schedule generation and analysis from a construction requirement perspective

This dissertation presents an overarching framework to integrate, interpret, and analyze construction requirements for schedule auto-generation and change management. It includes a generalized automated scheduling framework which provides core modeling tools and primary scheduling procedures necessary for formalizing construction methods and requirements and automatically generating alternative schedules from them. Then a generalized model is developed to formalize and convert complex functional requirements into temporal constraints. To improve the efficiency and feasibility of scheduling from complex requirement, the overarching framework utilizes a pre-emptive constraint analysis framework which allows basic constraints redundancies/inconsistencies to be identified and removed before performing scheduling. Finally, the overarching framework proposes a new perspective for schedule analysis which is based on the criticality of constraints and construction requirements. Three industrial case projects are used to demonstrate key features of the overarching framework and verify the research findings.