A Conceptual Decision Model for Delay Mitigation

A common method of recovering a delayed construction programme is by schedule compression through activity crashing. To be of practical benefit, however, the cost-effectiveness of crashing any of the remaining construction activities needs be examined before a decision is reached. Although the likely cost and productivity effects of crashing can be calculated using standard estimating techniques, the actual time-cost relationship may be affected by a number of external factors, and the experience and judgement of planners is needed to take this into account in selecting activities to crash. Case-based reasoning (CBR) is regarded as a suitable decision approach for capturing and reusing experience of this kind and the aim of this paper is to examine whether CBR could be applied to modelling the delay mitigation (DM) domain. The process of DM is first examined. A conceptual framework and rapid prototype is then developed based on the CBR approach.