Fuzzy multi-objective optimization of finance-based scheduling for construction projects with uncertainties in cost

This article employs a new approach to investigate multi-objective finance-based scheduling for construction projects under uncertainty. It takes into consideration the line of credit to provide cash for implementation of a construction project. Using a finance-based scheduling concept and NSGA-II, the article presents a multi-objective model to search the non-dominated solutions considering total duration, required credit, and financing cost as three objectives. Fuzzy-sets theory is used to account for uncertainties in direct cost of each activity for determining the required credit and financing cost. The model fully embeds fuzzy presentation of the uncertainties in direct cost into the model structure. The alpha-cut approach is used to account for the accepted risk level of the project manager, for which a separate Pareto front with set of non-dominated solutions has been developed. Fuzzy numbers ranking is performed by the Hamming distance method. An example project is presented to validate the model and emphasize its merits.