Activity Uncrashing Heuristic with Noncritical

Activity Rescheduling Method for the

Discrete Time-Cost Trade-Off Problem
Rifat Sonmez 1; Saman Aminbakhsh 2; and Tankut Atan 3
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Abstract: Despite intensive research efforts that have been devoted to discrete time-cost optimization of construction projects, the current
methods have very limited capabilities for solving the problem for real-life–sized projects. This study presents a new activity uncrashing
heuristic with noncritical activity rescheduling method to narrow the gap between the research and practice for time-cost optimization. The
uncrashing heuristic searches for new solutions by uncrashing the critical activities with the highest cost-slope. This novel feature of
the proposed heuristic enables identification and elimination of the dominated solutions during the search procedure. Hence, the heuristic
can determine new high-quality solutions based on the nondominated solutions. Furthermore, the proposed noncritical activity rescheduling
method of the heuristic decreases the amount of scheduling calculations, and high-quality solutions are achieved within a short CPU time.
Results of the computational experiments reveal that the new heuristic outperforms state-of-the-art methods significantly for large-scale
single-objective cost minimization and Pareto front optimization problems. Hence, the primary contribution of the paper is a new heuristic
method that can successfully achieve high-quality solutions for large-scale discrete time-cost optimization problems. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)
CO.1943-7862.0001870. © 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: Scheduling; Optimization; Algorithms; Multiple objective analysis; Project management.

Introduction
Critical path method (CPM) is commonly used for scheduling of
construction projects. In CPM, the durations of activities are deter-
mined according to the manpower and machinery resources allo-
cated, and construction methods selected. The normal duration
of an activity corresponds to the resource level and construction
method for which the duration cannot be shortened without increas-
ing the direct cost of the activity. In many construction projects, the
contractors may need to shorten (crash) durations of some activities
below their normal levels for several reasons such as avoiding the
delay penalty, decreasing the indirect expenses, or to mobilizing
the resources to another project. Expediting activities below their
normal duration comes at a cost, and this trade-off between time
and cost is known as the time-cost trade-off problem. The objective
of the general time-cost trade-off problem is to identify the set of
activity duration-cost alternatives (execution modes) that will min-
imize the total cost of the project.
Time-cost trade-off problem has been the subject of research
under various assumptions since the development of CPM. While
early research assumed linear and continuous relations between
time and cost (Siemens 1971; Goyal 1975), the discrete time-cost
1
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Middle East Technical Univ.,
Cankaya, Ankara 06531, Turkey (corresponding author). Email: rsonmez@
metu.edu.tr
2
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Atılım Univ., Incek,
Ankara 06830, Turkey. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4389-1910
3
Associate Professor, Dept. of Industrial Engineering, Bahçeşehir Univ.,
Beşiktas, Istanbul 34353, Turkey. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002
-3241-4617
Note. This manuscript was submitted on July 19, 2019; approved on
February 3, 2020; published online on May 18, 2020. Discussion period
open until October 18, 2020; separate discussions must be submitted for
individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Construction En-
gineering and Management, © ASCE, ISSN 0733-9364.
relations have been the main subject of recent research due to its
practical relevance (Vanhoucke 2005). In construction management
research, discrete time-cost tradeoff problem (DTCTP) has been the
main focus, as the majority of the techniques used to crash durations
(such as increasing crew size, increasing capacity of the construction
machines, using overtime, applying different construction methods,
etc.) lead to discrete time-cost alternatives.
Two types of DTCTP have mainly been studied in the construc-
tion management literature. The first problem aims to minimize the
project cost considering the direct and indirect costs, penalties and
bonuses for a given project deadline. The second problem involves
determination of the Pareto front, which is the complete and non-
dominated time-cost profile over the set of feasible project dura-
tions (Vanhoucke and Debels 2007). The Pareto front provides
decision makers multiple nondominated project time-cost alterna-
tives that enable consideration of different strategies at a broader
perspective for portfolio management. The nondominated solutions
can also be used to form a basis for negotiation and bargaining
(Yang et al. 2013).
Numerous heuristic and metaheuristic methods have been pro-
posed for the single-objective cost minimization DTCTP (Hegazy
1999; Elbeltagi et al. 2005, 2007; Vanhoucke and Debels 2007;
Sonmez and Bettemir 2012; Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2016;
Agdas et al. 2018), and also the Pareto front problem (Feng
et al. 1997; Zheng et al. 2005; Kandil and El-Rayes 2006; Yang
2007; Ng and Zhang 2008; Afshar et al. 2009; Zhang and Li
2010; Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2017). The main limitation of
the majority of the current methods is that they were tested with
problem instances including only up to 18 activities; hence they
have very limited capabilities for time cost optimization of con-
struction projects, which typically include more than 300 activities
(Liberatore et al. 2001). Few recent methods for the single-objective
DTCTP (Sonmez and Bettemir 2012; Aminbakhsh and Sonmez
2016; Agdas et al. 2018) and the Pareto front problem (Kandil
and El-Rayes 2006; Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2017) were validated

© ASCE 04020084-1 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2020, 146(8): 04020084

 with larger size test instances. However, these methods also have
several limitations. One of the main limitations of the majority of
current large-scale DTCTP methods is that they require large com-
putation time to achieve high-quality solutions. These methods also
have a limitation with respect to the instances used in the computa-
tional analysis as they have used few problems that were created by
copying small projects serially, which do not reflect the complexity
of large-scale construction projects adequately.
This paper aims to contribute to both researchers and professio-
nals by narrowing the gap between the literature and real-life project
management with multiple objectives. The primary objective of the
paper is to achieve an advancement in time-cost optimization of proj-
ects by presenting a novel heuristic that can obtain high-quality so-
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lutions within a short CPU time for large-scale single-objective cost
minimization and Pareto front DTCTP. The paper also aims to enable
improved performance evaluation of state-of-the-art methods for
real-life–sized projects by introducing realistic discrete time-cost
trade-off problem instances.
Literature Review
A variety of methods including exact methods, constraint program-
ming approaches, heuristics, and metaheuristics have been pro-
posed for the different versions of the discrete time-cost trade-off
optimization problem. De et al. (1995) formulated a mixed-integer
programming (MIP) model that minimized the total direct costs for
a given deadline. Vanhoucke (2005) proposed a branch and bound
algorithm for the deadline problem with time-switch constraints.
Klanšek (2015) proposed a general mixed-integer nonlinear model
for the discrete time-cost trade-off problems, including generalized
precedence constraints, project deadlines, and incremental and
total budget limitations. Al Haj and El-Sayegh (2015) formulated
a nonlinear-integer programming model that considers the impact
of total float loss for time-cost optimization. Abuwarda and Hegazy
(2019) proposed a comprehensive schedule optimization frame-
work based on constraint programming that enabled simultaneous
use of variety of constraints related to deadline, milestones, and
multiple resource limits for schedule compression.
Numerous studies have focused on heuristic and metaheuristic
procedures for achieving high-quality solutions within a short
amount of CPU time for the DTCTP. In an early study Hegazy
(1999) developed a genetic algorithm (GA) for the single-objective
problem and used an instance including 18 activities for perfor-
mance evaluation. The same problem was used to compare the
results of five evolutionary-based algorithms in a later research
(Elbeltagi et al. 2007). Vanhoucke and Debels (2007) discussed
a new metaheuristic approach for the DTCTP and demonstrated
the results of the algorithm with instances including 50 activities.
Sonmez and Bettemir (2012) presented a hybrid metaheuristic strat-
egy for the single-objective cost minimization DTCTP and evalu-
ated the performance of the new algorithm for different instances,
the largest of which included 630 activities and was created by
copying a base problem with 63 activities serially. Aminbakhsh
and Sonmez (2016) presented a discrete optimization method based
on Siemens (1971) heuristic and particle swarm optimization
(PSO), and used instances including up to 630 activities for perfor-
mance evaluation. Siemens (1971) and Goyal (1975) were the early
heuristic methods, which assumed linear and continuous relations
between time and cost and were applied on an example including
eight activities. In a recent study, Agdas et al. (2018) used graph
theory, parallel computing, and genetic algorithms to solve the cost
minimization DTCTP for large-scale instances up to 6,300 activ-
ities, which were also created by serially copying the 63 activity
© ASCE 04020084-2
J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2020, 146(8): 04020084
problems in Sonmez and Bettemir (2012). The method of Agdas
et al. (2018) required 16.8 h with eight processors to achieve a
7% deviation from the optimal for the 6,300 activity problem.
Metaheuristic attempts to solve the Pareto front problem, in-
clude genetic algorithms (Feng et al. 1997; Zheng et al. 2005), par-
ticle swarm optimization methods (Yang 2007; Zhang and Li
2010), ant colony optimization algorithms (Ng and Zhang 2008;
Afshar et al. 2009), and an integrated multiobjective particle swarm
optimization and support vector regression method (Yang et al.
2013). In all of these metaheuristic studies the largest problem used
to evaluate the performance of the methods only contained 18 ac-
tivities. Kandil and El-Rayes (2006) presented a parallel multiob-
jective genetic algorithm framework to enable optimal planning of
large-scale construction projects. In computational experiments
Kandil and El-Rayes (2006) used three Pareto front instances with
180, 360, and 720 activities that were created by copying the 18
activity problem serially. The global parallel genetic algorithm
of Kandil and El-Rayes (2006) required 15.4 h over a supercom-
puting cluster of 50 processors to obtain the Pareto front solutions
for the 720 activity problem. The same 180, 360, and 720 activity
instances were also used in the performance evaluation of the recent
Pareto front optimization method of Aminbakhsh and Sonmez
(2017) based on Siemens (1971) heuristic and particle swarm
optimization.
The existing research on the DTCTP mainly developed meta-
heuristic methods that usually rely on random search algorithms.
There are scarce studies that focus on heuristic search procedures.
Among the few research that report performance of the methods for
large-scale projects, the majority require long CPU times, and may
not achieve high-quality solutions for complex problems even with
long CPU times. The instances that are used to evaluate the perfor-
mances of the methods is another limitation of these studies,
because they were created by copying small problems that do
not fully represent the complexity of the large-scale projects. The
primary objective of this paper is to fill these gaps in the single-
objective and Pareto front literature by proposing a novel heuristic
method and new set of large-scale DTCTP instances for contribut-
ing optimal planning and scheduling of the real-life–sized construc-
tion projects.
Problem Formulation
The objective of general DTCTP is to determine the optimal set of
time-cost alternatives (modes) that will minimize the sum of direct
and indirect costs. The general single-objective cost minimization
DTCTP can be formulated by modifying the formulation of De et al.
(1995) to include the indirect costs and delay penalty as follows:
X
S X
mðjÞ
minimize ðdcjk xjk Þ þ D × ic þ Delay × dp ð1Þ
j¼1 k¼1
X
mðjÞ
xjk ¼ 1; ∀ j ¼ f1; : : : ; Sg ð2Þ
k¼1
X
mðjÞ
djk xjk þ Stj ≤ Stl ; ∀ l ∈ Scj and ∀ j ¼ f1; : : : ; Sg
k¼1
ð3Þ
D ≥ StSþ1 ð4Þ
J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

Delay ≥ D − Deadline ð5Þ
St0 ¼ 0 ð6Þ
xjk ∈ f0; 1g; ∀ j ¼ f1; : : : ; Sg and ∀ k ¼ f1; : : : mðjÞg
ð7Þ
Stj ≥ 0; ∀ j ¼ f1; : : : ; Sg ð8Þ
D; Delay ≥ 0 ð9Þ
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where S = number of activities not including the dummy activities;
0 and S þ 1 represent the start and end of the project; dcjk = direct
cost of mode k for activity j; xjk = mode selection variable; D =
project duration; ic = daily indirect cost; Delay = project’s delay
amount; dp = daily delay penalty; djk = duration of mode k for
activity j; mðjÞ = number of modes for activity j; Deadline =
project deadline; Stj = start time for activity j; Scj = set of imme-
diate successors for j; and St0 and Stsþ1 = start times of start and
finish dummy activities. The minimum cost Ca solution for a par-
ticular project deadline Da can be obtained by setting a constraint to
the project duration D as follows:
D ¼ Da ð10Þ
The set of solutions forming the optimal Pareto front can be
obtained by determining the minimum cost solutions for all feasible
project durations with the Eqs. (1–10) and then removing the do-
minated solutions (Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2017).
Activity Uncrashing Heuristic with Noncritical
Activity Rescheduling Method
The heuristic methods used in the existing time-cost trade-off stud-
ies (Siemens 1971; Goyal 1975; Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2016;
Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2017) are based on a procedure that starts
with the longest project duration solution and determines new so-
lutions by crashing the critical activities with the least cost-slope.
These heuristics usually require a large amount of computational
time for large-scale networks especially when there are several par-
allel critical paths. Due to their crashing schemes, existing crashing
heuristics can determine the dominated solutions only after per-
forming and completing the whole crashing procedure. However,
the proposed heuristic procedure in this work starts with the short-
est project duration solution (the all-crashed schedule) and searches
for new solutions by uncrashing the critical activities with the high-
est cost-slope. This novel feature of the proposed heuristic presents
two major advantages. By uncrashing only one activity on the criti-
cal path, the proposed heuristic can achieve a new solution with a
few calculations in a very short time compared to the heuristic or
metaheuristic methods that achieve a new solution by crashing
the critical path. The proposed uncrashing heuristic also enables
determination and elimination of the dominated solutions during
the search procedure; hence, new solutions can be built based on
the nondominated or high-quality solutions. These features of the
new heuristic enable achieving high-quality nondominated Pareto
front solutions in a short amount of CPU time. Furthermore, a novel
scheduling method is also developed in the new uncrashing heu-
ristic for rescheduling the noncritical activities effectively.
© ASCE 04020084-3
J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2020, 146(8): 04020084
Noncritical Activity Rescheduling Method
The proposed heuristic creates new solutions by uncrashing the
critical activities. Meanwhile, to improve the solutions obtained by
uncrashing critical activities, the heuristic may also uncrash the
noncritical activities. Traditional CPM calculations would require
a full forward and backward pass calculations for all of the activ-
ities in the project network to reschedule their early start times
(ES), early finish times (EF), late start times (LS), late finish times
(LF), and floats, even if the duration of a single noncritical activity
is changed. A new scheduling method, hereafter named noncritical
activity rescheduling method (NARM) is presented to decrease the
amount of scheduling calculations to achieve high-quality solutions
for time-cost optimization of large-scale projects within a short
CPU time.
NARM determines the noncritical activities that are impacted by
a change in the duration of a noncritical activity, and only resched-
ules those activities that are impacted by the change. The proposed
method only updates the required start and finish times by perform-
ing the noncritical partial forward pass and the noncritical partial
backward pass scheduling procedures. When the duration of a non-
critical activity is changed, NARM first determines the updated EF
of the activity. If the updated EF of the activity is not later than the
LF of the activity NARM is suitable for rescheduling. Along with
the EF, the method determines the updated LS and calculates the
updated total float (TF). Because the duration change does not
impact the ES and the LF of the activity only EF, LS, and TF
are updated for this activity. The updated noncritical activity is in-
cluded in the critical path if the updated TF is equal to zero.
In NARM, the noncritical successors of the updated activity
with an ES earlier than the updated EF of the rescheduled activity
are added to the activities to be rescheduled (ATRS) list. In the par-
tial forward pass scheduling procedure of the NARM, the ES, EF,
and the TFs of all succeeding activities that are included in the
ATRS list are updated. The ES of the activities in ATRS list are
rescheduled so that these activities start immediately after the EF
times of their predecessors and the EF times and TFs of the all
activities in the ATRS list are updated. The activities with an up-
dated zero float are included in the critical path.
The ATRS list is updated so that it will include the successors of
the previous ATRS list with an ES earlier than the updated EF of
the preceding activity; afterward, the updated activities are removed
from the list. The ES, EF times, and TFs of all of the required
activities are updated by partial forward pass procedure, and the
procedure is repeated until all the succeeding activities that are im-
pacted by the duration change are updated as shown in Fig. 1. In the
partial backward pass scheduling procedure of this method, the LF,
LS, and the TFs of all preceding activities that are impacted by the
duration change are updated. The predecessors with an LF later
than the updated LS of the rescheduled activity are impacted by
the duration change, hence these activities are rescheduled. NARM
determines the activities that are impacted by the duration change
and performs partial backward pass scheduling until all the im-
pacted preceding activities are updated similar to the forward pass
as shown in Fig. 1. In the final stage of the partial backward pass,
the activities with an updated zero float are included in the criti-
cal path.
Case Example for Noncritical Activity Rescheduling
Method
A CPM network given in Fig. 2 will be used as a case example to
describe the NARM. The ES, EF, LS, LF, dates, and the TFs of
activities in Fig. 2 are calculated using traditional forward and
backward pass calculations. In the case example the duration of
J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

Include the activity in
Yes
the critical path
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Include the activities
in the critical path
No
Update the ATRS list
so that it will only include
the successors with an ES
earlier than the updated
EF of the activity
Fig. 1. Flow chart of noncritical activity rescheduling method.
© ASCE
Update the LS and TF of the non critical
activity for which the duration has
changed
Is the updated TF of the
activity equal to zero?
No
Is there a successor with
ES earlier than updated EF
of the activity?
Yes
Add the successors with an ES earlier
than the updated EF of the activity to the
activities to be re-scheduled (ATRS) list
Update ES, EF and TF of all activities in
the ATRS list
Is the updated TF of the
Yes any activity in the ATRS list
equal to zero?
No
For the activities
in the ATRS list is there a
For the activities predessor with LS later than
in the ATRS list updated LF of the
Yes is there a successor with ES activity?
earlier than updated EF of
the activity?
Yes Update LS, LF and TF of all
No activities in the ATRS list
For the activity
Update the ATRS list
which the duration has
so that it will only include
changed is there a
Yes the predecessors with an
predecessor with LS later
LS later than the updated
than updated LF of the
LF of the activity
activity?
No
No
Report the results
04020084-4 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.
J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2020, 146(8): 04020084
 5 18 23 23 22 45
2 3
5 0 23 23 0 45

0 5 5 5 3 8 8 10 18 18 11 29 29 6 35 35 2 37 45 5 50
1 4 5 6 7 8 12
0 0 5 13 8 16 16 8 26 26 8 37 37 8 43 43 8 45 45 0 50

5 7 12 12 8 20 20 16 36
9 10 11
14 9 21 21 9 29 29 9 45
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ES EF
Critical Path Act. No
LS TF LF

Fig. 2. Case example for noncritical activity rescheduling method.

5 18 23 23 22 45
2 3
5 0 23 23 0 45

0 5 5 5 3 8 8 10 18 18 11 29 29 6 35 35 2 37 45 5 50
1 4 5 6 7 8 12
0 0 5 13 8 16 16 8 26 26 8 37 37 8 43 43 8 45 45 0 50
a b
5 7 12 12 11 23 23 16 39
9 10 11
14 9 21 18 6 29 29 6 45

ES EF
Critical Path Act. No
LS TF LF

Fig. 3. Partial forward pass procedure of noncritical activity rescheduling method.

Activity-10 is increased to 11 days from its original duration of
8 days. NARM first determines the updated EF of the activity
as 23 by adding the revised duration to its ES time of 12, in the
partial forward pass procedure as shown by “a” in Fig. 3. Because
the updated EF of the Activity-10 (23) is not later than its LF (29),
NARM can be used to update the schedule. The method then up-
dates the LS of the activity as 18 by subtracting the revised duration
from its LF time of 29. The updated TF of Activity-10 is calculated
as six, by subtracting its updated EF of 23 from its LF of 29.
Activity-11, which is the successor of Activity-10 is added to
the ATRS list, because it has an ES date of 20 that is earlier than
the updated EF date of Activity-10 (23). The partial forward pass is
continued, by updating the ES of Activity-11 as 23, so that it starts
immediately after the updated EF time of Activity-10, as shown by
the “b” in Fig. 3. The EF of Activity-11 is updated by adding its
duration of 16 to its updated ES. The updated TF of Activity-11 is
calculated as six, by subtracting its updated EF of 39 from its LF of
45. Because Activity-12, which is the only successor of Activity-11,
has an ES date of 45 that is not earlier than the updated EF date of
Activity-11 (39), partial forward pass is completed after removal of
Activity-11 from the ATRS list.
In the partial backward pass, Activity-9 is added to the ATRS
list, because it has an LF date of 21 that is later than the updated LS
date of Activity-10 (18). The LF of Activity-9 is updated as 18, so
that it does not finish later than the updated LS time of Activity-10,
as shown by “c” in Fig. 4. The LS of the Activity-9 is updated by
subtracting its duration of seven from its updated LF. The updated
TF of Activity-9 is calculated as six, by subtracting its EF of 12
from its updated LF of 18. Because Activity-1, which is the only
predecessor of Activity-9, has an LF date of five that is not later
than the updated LS date of Activity-9 (11), partial backward pass
is completed.
The case example illustrates that the proposed method performs
rescheduling of noncritical activities by only performing partial
scheduling of three activities (Activities 10, 11, and 9) when the du-
ration of Activity-10 is changed to 11 days; whereas traditional criti-
cal path method will require full scheduling of all of the 12 activities.
Hence, the example illustrates the effectiveness of the NARM for
rescheduling of noncritical activities, which is crucial for reducing
the CPU time of time-cost or resource optimization methods with
iterative and repetitive nature requiring rescheduling of noncritical
activities, such as the proposed activity uncrashing heuristic.

© ASCE 04020084-5 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2020, 146(8): 04020084

 5 18 23 23 22 45
2 3
5 0 23 23 0 45

0 5 5 5 3 8 8 10 18 18 11 29 29 6 35 35 2 37 45 5 50
1 4 5 6 7 8 12
0 0 5 13 8 16 16 8 26 26 8 37 37 8 43 43 8 45 45 0 50
c a b
5 7 12 12 11 23 23 16 39
9 10 11
11 6 18 18 6 29 29 6 45
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ES EF
Critical Path Act. No
LS TF LF

Fig. 4. Partial backward pass procedure of noncritical activity rescheduling method.

Activity Uncrashing Heuristic
Unlike earlier heuristic approaches, in lieu of using the all-normal
schedule (CPM max ) initially, the activity uncrashing heuristic ini-
tiates from the all-crashed schedule (CPM min ), by selecting the
shortest/costliest time-cost alternative for each activity. The duration
of this schedule is determined using the CPM technique and the total
cost is calculated by including the direct and indirect costs and the
delay penalty. In the next step of the uncrashing heuristic, duration
differences, cost differences, and cost-slopes of discrete time-cost
modes for all activities are calculated according to Eqs. (11–13)
DDiffjn ¼ djðnþ1Þ − djðnÞ ; ∀ j ¼ f1; : : : ; Sg;
∀ n ¼ f1; : : : ; mðjÞ − 1g
CDiffjn ¼ dcjðnþ1Þ − dcjðnÞ ; ∀ j ¼ f1; : : : ; Sg;
∀ n ¼ f1; : : : ; mðjÞ − 1g
CDiff jn
CSjn ¼ ; ∀ j ¼ f1; : : : ; Sg;
DDiff jn
∀ n ¼ f1; : : : ; mðjÞ − 1g
where DDiff jn = difference between durations of mode n þ 1
and n for activity j; CDiff jn = difference between direct costs
of mode n þ 1 and n for activity j; and CSjn = cost-slopes from
mode n to n þ 1 for activity j.
Time-cost alternatives are then sorted in descending order, first
according to CDiff values then according to CS values; an index
named uncrash free-float index (UFF − index) is assigned to each
alternative. Next, time-cost alternatives are sorted in descending
order first according to CS values then in ascending order accord-
ing to DDiff values, and an index named Uncrash Cost-Slope
ðUCSÞ − index is assigned to each alternative. According to the
UFF − index, an alternative providing a greater cost saving is
uncrashed first. In case of a tie, the alternative with a greater
cost-slope rate is selected; if the tie is still not broken, the first alter-
native is selected (this index orders the time-cost alternatives
according to the decreasing cost difference). Conversely, according
to UCS − index, an alternative with a greater cost-slope rate is un-
crashed first. In case of a tie, the alternative providing a smaller
duration reduction is selected; if the tie is still not broken, the first
alternative is selected (this index orders the time-cost alternatives
according to the decreasing cost-slope).
Because the uncrashing heuristic starts from the all-crashed
schedule, an uncrashing scheme is designed to optimize the solu-
tions. The uncrashing scheme incorporates two different phases,
namely uncrash noncritical activities that can be uncrashed free
of cost without increasing the project duration, or uncrash free-float
phase, and UCS phase that uncrashes critical activities based on
their cost-slopes. The UFF phase is performed to improve the
solutions obtained by the UCS phase by decreasing the direct cost
of a given schedule. Through UFF phase the activities with total
floats (TF) greater than or equal to their effective (immediate avail-
able) crash amounts, DDiffjn ≤ TFj , are uncrashed to their next
ð11Þ
available option, by uncrashing one activity at a time. After per-
forming each UFF, the noncritical activities are rescheduled using
the NARM. The UFF process is continued until either all of the
ð12Þ noncritical activities are fully uncrashed, or their total floats be-
come less than their effective crash amounts. While each solution,
Sol, is recorded in an archive called Solutions, the nondominated
solutions are recorded in an external repository called Pareto.
After the first nondominated solution is generated and stored in
ð13Þ Pareto with a status of Open, the uncrashing heuristic performs first
uncrashing cycle on this Sol. In an uncrashing cycle, the activities
that can be uncrashed are uncrashed to their next available option,
by executing UCS process one activity at a time. After performing
each UCS, uncrashing heuristic implements the regular CPM
calculations to calculate the duration and TFs. For this new Sol
uncrashing heuristic executes UFF process and searches for the
activities that can be uncrashed without increasing the project du-
ration. The heuristic then stores the current solution in Solutions.
During the cycle all nondominated solutions will be recorded in
Pareto with a status Open. Once the uncrashing cycle is completed
all of the solutions stored in Solutions are deleted, and the status
of Sol ∈ Pareto, which was selected at the start of the cycle is
changed to Closed. New schedules are generated through UCS
and UFF processes based on the nondominated solutions which
are already stored in Pareto, as long as there exists at least one
Sol in Pareto with Open status, or, until all activities are uncrashed
to their modes with the longest durations. The heuristic terminates
when the status of the all of the nondominated Sols stored in Pareto
are Closed. The procedure of the uncrashing heuristic is summa-
rized in Fig. 5.

© ASCE 04020084-6 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2020, 146(8): 04020084

 Start Uncrash Free-Float

Retrieve No Yes
Calculate Deadline
Project Info. j S

Yes
n m
No
No Yes Calculate CS, DDiff, Index by CDiff, then
j S CDiff by CS for UFF Increment j
DDiff Total-Float
No
Yes
n m
Index by CS, then Increment n Yes
Increment j No Increment n
by DDiff for UCS
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Uncrash based on
Calculate Cost Perform NARM
UFF Index

Fully Crash all Uncrash Free-

Calculate CPM Calculate Dur/Cost
Activities Float
Return

No
Yes Uncrash based on
Store Sol in Pareto Sol in not Closed Calculate CPM
UCS Index

Uncrash Free- Store Sol in

Calculate Dur/Cost Close Sol
Float Solutions

Remove dominated Remove dominated

Increment Sol index
Sol’s from Solutions Sol’s from Pareto

No max Sol index Yes Copy Solutions to Output

reached Pareto Pareto

End

Fig. 5. Flow chart of uncrashing heuristic.

Case Example for Activity Uncrashing Heuristic penalty is $2,000=day. In the first step of the heuristic, the duration
The proposed uncrashing heuristic is explained using a small case of all-crashed schedule is determined by CPM. The initial solution
(Schedule-1) has a project duration of 31 days, and a total cost of
problem which is presented in Fig. 6. The indirect cost for the case
$270,600 as shown in Table 1. In the Schedule-1 which consists of
problem is $1,000=day, the deadline is 45 days, and the delay
all-crashed modes, Activities 1, 3, and 6 are on the critical path.
According to UFF, among the noncritical activities that have a to-
3 tal float (TF) greater than or equal to its effective (immediate avail-
1. (16, $52,000) able) crash amounts, Activity-4 with a CDiff of $18,000 provides
2. (20, $45,000)
1 3. (28, $33,000) the greatest cost saving as shown in Table 2. Thus, Activity-4 is
1. (12, $21,600) uncrashed first, to its second mode (M2) and the noncritical activ-
2. (14, $17,000)
3. (26, $14,000) 4 6 ities are rescheduled using the NARM. The same procedure is ap-
Start 1. (5, $52,000) 1. (3, $36,000) Finish plied to Activity-5, which is uncrashed to its second mode (M2);
2
2. (8, $34,000) 2. (5, $24,000) similarly, Activity-2 is then uncrashed to its second mode (M2).
1. (7, $38,000) In Schedule-1.iv and Schedule-1.v, Activity-2, and Activity-5
2. (10, $26,000) are uncrashed to their third option (M3), respectively. The resulting
3. (12, $20,000) 5 ID
1. (10, $40,000)
Schedule-1.v has a duration of 31 days and a total cost of $216,600
1. (Dur., Cost)
2. (15, $24,000) n. (Dur., Cost) (Table 1) and is recorded in Pareto with a status Open as the first
3. (16, $22,000) cycle terminates.
The effective (immediately available) uncrashing alternatives
Fig. 6. Case example for uncrashing heuristic.
for the only Sol in Pareto with a status of Open (Schedule-1.v)

© ASCE 04020084-7 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

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 Table 1. Candidate solutions for the case example
Schedule number Cycle number Continue from Activity Uncrash Duration (days) Direct cost ($) Indirect cost ($) Total cost ($)
1 1 — — All Crashed 31 239,600 31,000 270,600
1.i 1 1 4 M1 to M2 31 221,600 31,000 252,600
1.ii 1 1.i 5 M1 to M2 31 205,600 31,000 236,600
1.iii 1 1.ii 2 M1 to M2 31 193,600 31,000 224,600
1.iv 1 1.iii 2 M2 to M3 31 187,600 31,000 218,600
1.v 1 1.iv 5 M2 to M3 31 185,600 31,000 216,600
2 2 1.v 6 M1 to M2 33 173,600 33,000 206,600
— 2 1.v 1 M1 to M2 33 — — —
3 2 1.v 3 M1 to M2 35 178,600 35,000 213,600
4 3 2 1 M1 to M2 35 169,000 35,000 204,000
5 3 2 3 M1 to M2 37 166,600 37,000 203,600
6 4 4 3 M1 to M2 39 162,000 39,000 201,000
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7 4 4 1 M2 to M3 47 166,000 47,000 217,000

8 5 5 1 M1 to M2 39 162,000 39,000 201,000
9 5 5 3 M2 to M3 45 154,600 45,000 199,600
10 6 6 3 M2 to M3 47 150,000 47,000 201,000
11 6 6 1 M2 to M3 51 159,000 51,000 222,000
12 7 9 1 M1 to M2 47 150,000 47,000 201,000
Note: Boldface distinguishes the nondominated solutions.

Table 2. Cost-slopes, DDiff, CDiff, and index values of uncrashing Single-Objective Activity Uncrashing Heuristic
alternatives
The proposed uncrashing heuristic can be used for solving both
Crash Cost-slope DDiff CDiff
single-objective cost minimization and Pareto front DTCTPs.
Activity mode ($/day) (days) ($) UCS-index UFF-index
The Pareto front uncrashing heuristic described in the previous sec-
1 M1 to M2 2,300 2 4,600 6 8 tion is slightly modified for the cost minimization problem. In the
1 M2 to M3 250 12 3,000 10 9 UCS phase of the cost minimization problem, for a candidate sol-
2 M1 to M2 4,000 3 12,000 3 4 ution within the same cycle if a solution with same duration already
2 M2 to M3 3,000 2 6,000 5 7
exists in the Solutions that solution is discarded to accelerate the
3 M1 to M2 1,750 4 7,000 8 6
3 M2 to M3 1,500 8 12,000 9 5 search process. Cost minimization uncrashing heuristic also uses
4 M1 to M2 6,000 3 18,000 2 1 Result to store only the least-cost Sol among Solutions rather than
5 M1 to M2 3,200 5 16,000 4 2 recording the whole Pareto.
5 M2 to M3 2,000 1 2,000 7 10
6 M1 to M2 6,000 2 12,000 1 3
Computational Experiments

Computational experiments are conducted to evaluate the perfor-

are Activity-1: M1 to M2, Activity-3: M1 to M2, and Activity-6:
M1 to M2. Activity-6 with the largest cost-slope of $6,000=day
is uncrashed to its second mode (M2) in the course of first UCS
phase of the second cycle and the result is stored as Schedule-2 in
Solutions. The next least-cost-slope activity is Activity-1; however,
uncrashing it to its second mode (M2) results in a solution with
a duration of 33 days, which is the duration of the Schedule-2
in Solutions, and none of the activities can be uncrashed free
of cost without increasing the project duration, hence the heuristic
does not calculate the cost for the current solution and the solu-
tion is discarded. The final uncrashable activity in this cycle is
Activity-3, which is uncrashed to its second mode (M2) and
Schedule-3 is obtained. The UFF process is not executed for
Schedule-2 and Schedule-3, as none of the noncritical activities
in these schedules can be uncrashed free of cost without increasing
the project duration. At the end of the second uncrashing cycle the
only nondominated Sol in Solutions, i.e., Schedule-2 (Schedule-3
is dominated by Schedule-2), is copied to Pareto and the status of
Schedule-1.v is changed to Closed, and all the Sol in Solutions are
deleted. In the next uncrashing cycle the nondominated Sols,
Schedule-4 and Schedule-5, are obtained by continuing uncrashing
from Schedule-2. The uncrashing procedure is repeated to obtain
the final Pareto including the nondominated Sols Schedule-1.v,
Schedule-2, Schedule-4, Schedule-5, Schedule-6, and Schedule-9
as shown in Table 1.
mance of the new uncrashing heuristics for single-objective cost
minimization and Pareto front DTCTPs. The proposed heuristics
is coded in C# and compiled within Visual Studio 2013 on a
64-bit platform. All of the experiments are carried out on a personal
computer with a 16 GB 667 MHz DDR3 random-access memory
(RAM), Intel Core i7-3.40 GHz CPU, and 64-bit Windows 10 op-
eration system. In the tests, the new heuristic is executed using a
single processor and overclocking was not performed.
New Problem Instances
New large-scale instances are generated to enable improved perfor-
mance evaluation of state-of-the-art methods for real-life–sized
problems. RanGen2 random network generator (Vanhoucke et al.
2008) is used to generate the networks for the problems. Five rep-
lications of networks with serial/parallel factor (I 2 ) 0.8 are used to
generate 20 networks with 100, 200, 500, and 990 activities. Six
time-cost alternatives are generated by means of nonincreasing con-
vex time-cost functions using the procedure of Akkan et al. (2005).
The details of instance generation procedure are described in
Aminbakhsh (2018). The deadline for each instance is set as the
average of CPM max and CPM min . An indirect cost of $1,000=day
and a delay penalty of $2,000=day are used in all of the problems.
All of the new instances were solved to optimality for the cost
minimization problem with the mixed-integer programming model

© ASCE 04020084-8 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

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 Table 3. Performance of uncrashing heuristic for cost minimization Table 4. Comparison of the results for the 630-activity problems
problem
630a 630b
Instance Optimal ($) Heuristic ($) PD (%) CPU time (s)
CPU CPU
T100_101 8,027,232 8,059,341 0.40 0.11 Method APD (%) time (s) APD (%) time (s)
T100_102 8,272,300 8,347,578 0.91 0.07
HA (Sonmez and 2.41 4,380 2.47 4,380
T100_103 8,155,670 8,205,420 0.61 0.06
Bettemir 2012)
T100_104 8,709,207 8,810,234 1.16 0.11
DPSO (Aminbakhsh 0.33 15 0.33 15
T100_105 8,194,660 8,246,286 0.63 0.06
and Sonmez 2016)
T200_101 15,729,352 15,861,479 0.84 0.29
GA (Agdas et al. 2018) 0.79 NA 1.12 NA
T200_102 16,995,377 17,180,627 1.09 0.28
Uncrashing heuristic 0.05 5 0.1 5
T200_103 16,311,611 16,492,670 1.11 0.29
(this study)
T200_104 16,670,816 16,822,520 0.91 0.28
T200_105 16,663,623 16,791,933 0.77 0.28
T500_101 40,872,814 41,297,891 1.04 2.31
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T500_102 42,070,915 42,558,938 1.16 2.37

T500_103 41,819,190 42,362,839 1.30 2.29
T500_104 41,219,686 41,656,615 1.06 1.93 Table 5. Comparison of uncrashing heuristic with GA
T500_105 41,444,839 41,933,888 1.18 2.42 Method GA (Agdas et al. 2018) Uncrashing heuristic
T990_101 82,463,696 83,296,579 1.01 12.33
T990_102 80,748,487 81,499,448 0.93 10.15 Instance APD (%) CPU time (s) PD (%) CPU time (s)
T990_103 80,695,576 81,454,114 0.94 7.94 1,800 7.05 20,952 0.00 41
T990_104 81,906,165 82,667,892 0.93 10.19 1,800 14.72 21,024 0.00 41
T990_105 81,188,735 81,935,671 0.92 10.18 3,150 6.50 32,940 0.04 548
— — Average 0.94 3.19 3,150 4.73 33,876 0.10 529
6,300 7.66 59,112 0.04 4,485
6,300 6.96 60,336 0.10 4,293
Average 7.94 38,040 0.05 1,656
presented in Eqs. (1–9) and using GUROBI solver version 5.6.3
within a time limit of 1 h. The optimal Pareto front was determined
by solving the mixed-integer programming model presented in
Eqs. (1–10) several times for all the durations between CPM min
and CPM max , and discarding the dominated solutions. For the outperforms all the three state-of-the art methods for the two large-
Pareto problem the instances with 100 and 200 activities were scale cost minimization problems by achieving results with a 0.1%
solved to optimality within the 1 h limit with GUROBI solver; how- or less deviation from the optimal within 5 s.
ever, the global optimal solution for any of the problems with 500, Agdas et al. (2018) created six instances including 1,800, 3,150,
and 990 activities was not achieved. The instances and their optimal and 6,300 activities by copying the 18 activity and 63 activity prob-
solutions are available on the websites provided in the Data Avail- lems serially. These six instances are used to provide a comparison
ability Statement. of the proposed heuristic with the recent GA of Agdas et al. (2018)
as shown in Table 5. The results of GA are the average of five trials
executed with eight CPUs of a high performance computing
Single-objective Cost Minimization Problem facility. GA (Agdas et al. 2018) was able to obtain solutions with
Performance Comparison an average percent deviation (APD) of 7.05% and 14.72% for two
The performance of the single-objective uncrashing heuristic is first instances with 1,800 activities within 5.8 h, whereas the uncrashing
tested for the cost minimization problem using the new instances. heuristic determined the optimal solutions for both problems within
The results of the proposed heuristic for the instances are summa- 41 s. For the problems including 3,150 and 6,300 activities GA
rized in Table 3. The proposed heuristic was able to determine was able to achieve solutions with an average percent deviation
solutions within an average percent deviation (PD) of 1% from the of 4.73%–7.66% within a CPU time between 9.2 and 16.8 h. The
optimal in an average CPU time of 3.19 s. The largest deviation uncrashing heuristic achieved solutions with a percent deviation of
from the optimal was 1.30% for a problem with 500 activities, 0.04%–0.10% within a CPU time between 9.1 min and 1.3 h. The
and the longest CPU time was 12.33 s for a problem with 990 ac- computational experiments reveal that the new uncrashing heuristic
tivities. Hence the new heuristic was able to achieve high-quality outperforms state-of-the-art methods significantly for the cost
solutions within few seconds for the large-scale cost minimization minimization problem by achieving high-quality solutions in less
problems including up to 990 activities. CPU time.
The large-scale instances that were created by copying small
problems are used to compare the performance of the uncrashing
Pareto Front Problem—Hypervolume
heuristic with the state-of-the-art methods for the cost minimization
problem. The results of uncrashing heuristics for two large-scale The results obtained from multiobjective optimizations comprise a
instances included in Sonmez and Bettemir (2012) with 630 activ- set of solutions rather than a single optimal solution. Of the multi-
ities are compared with the results of hybrid genetic algorithm (HA) objective optimization problems, Pareto front DTCTP yields a
(Sonmez and Bettemir 2012), discrete particle swarm optimization sequence of solutions for the problems with objectives of time and
(DPSO) method (Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2016), and genetic cost. Consequently, the definition of quality of solutions is compli-
algorithm (Agdas et al. 2018) in Table 4. The results of the HA, cated within this context and for Pareto front DTCTP. Hence,
DPSO, and GA are average results of several trials due to the sto- numerous performance indices have been proposed for evaluation
chastic nature of the methods, whereas the results of the uncrashing of solution quality of multiobjective optimization methods, which
heuristic are based on a single trial, as the proposed method is not a mainly engage two aspects of the generated solutions (Zitzler et al.
stochastic method. The results reveal that the new heuristic method 2000): (1) the distance of achieved nondominated Pareto solutions

© ASCE 04020084-9 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

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 Table 6. Example Pareto solution HVPF
HR ¼ ð14Þ
TP PFa HVTP
Duration (days) Cost ($) Duration (days) Cost ($) where HVPF = hypervolume of the Pareto front being evaluated;
44 648,000 44 648,000 and HVTP = hypervolume of the optimal/true Pareto front (TP).
53 621,000 53 642,000 In case the optimal Pareto front is not available, the HVTP is taken
64 620,000 62 641,000 as the hypervolume of the unified Pareto front (UPF), that includes
— — 64 637,000 the nondominated solutions obtained by combining nondominated
— — 69 620,000
solutions of different optimization methods for the same problem.
The hypervolume of a Pareto front for the DTCTP can be
calculated using Eq. (15)
to the optimal Pareto front should be minimized, and (2) a good
X
NS
distribution and spread of the solutions (representing the distribu- HV ¼ ðCost ðRÞ − Cost ðpÞÞ
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tion of the optimal Pareto) is desired. The amount of CPU time
required to achieve the solutions is also crucial along with the sol-
ution quality in performance evaluation of different time-cost opti-
mization methods.
In previous studies (Kandil and El-Rayes 2006; Afshar et al.
2009; Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2017) the number of nondomi-
nated Pareto solutions is commonly used to evaluate the quality of
solutions. The number of nondominated Pareto solutions provides
an indication for the distribution of the solutions; however, this
metric is not sufficient to evaluate the quality solutions if used
solely, because the metric may give misleading results under certain
circumstances. For example, in a problem with an optimal Pareto
front (true Pareto front—TP) consisting of three nondominated
solutions, a solution PFa including five nondominated solutions
as shown in Table 6, would be considered as a better solution than
the optimal Pareto front, if only the number of nondominated
Pareto solutions is used to evaluate the solution quality.
Hypervolume (HV), or hyperarea, indicator was proposed in
recent years to evaluate the quality solutions of multiobjective op-
timization methods (Zitzler and Thiele 1998; Veldhuizen 1999;
Knowles 2006; Beume et al. 2007). Hypervolume indicates the
partition of the solution space bounded by the nondominated fron-
tier and a reference point (R) (Zitzler and Thiele 1998). For each
Sol ∈ Pareto, an area is constructed using a reference point R as
the diagonal corner of the area.
A normalized, HV-based approach called hyperarea ratio (HR)
(Veldhuizen 1999) is adopted in this paper to evaluate the quality of
the solutions.Unary HR is calculated according to Eq. (14)
p¼1
× ðDuration ðp þ 1Þ − Duration ðpÞÞ ð15Þ
where Cost ðRÞ = cost value of the reference point; Duration
ðp þ 1Þ = duration value of the ðp þ 1Þth Sol ∈ Pareto; Cost ðpÞ
and Duration ðpÞ = cost and duration values of pth Sol ∈ Pareto;
and NS = total number of Sol ∈ Pareto.
Hypervolume calculation requires selection of a reference point
R. In general the reference point is selected such that it will give a
space that is slightly larger than the actual objective space (Bader
2010). Beume et al. (2007) recommended incrementing the ex-
tremal objective values by one, and Knowles (2006) suggested in-
cluding a corner box which is 1% larger than the objective space. In
this research, reference point was determined based on suggestions
of Beume et al. (2007) and Knowles (2006) according to the mag-
nitude of the objective values. The cost value of the reference point
was taken as 0.5% larger than the maximum cost value of the ob-
jective space, and the duration value of the reference point was
taken as 0.5% larger than the maximum duration value of the ob-
jective space.
The example of Table 6 will be used to illustrate the hyperarea
ratio calculations performed to evaluate the performance of the new
uncrashing heuristic for the Pareto front problem. The cost value of
the reference point was taken as $651,240 which is 0.5% larger
than the maximum cost value ($648,000) of the objective space.
Merely in order to provide an improved visual representation of
the hyperarea given in Fig. 7, duration value for the reference point
was set by increasing the maximum duration by 5%, rather than the

655,000

650,000

645,000
Project Cost ($)

640,000

635,000

630,000

625,000

620,000

615,000
40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75
Project Duration (Days)

Fig. 7. Hyperarea ratio calculation for HVPFA.

© ASCE 04020084-10 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

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 Table 7. Performance of uncrashing heuristic for Pareto front problem
Number of solutions Hyperarea ratio CPU time (s)
Problem Optimal PFPSO Heuristic PFPSO Heuristic Optimal PFPSO Heuristic
T100_101 149 14 128 0.61 0.99 92.7 0.5 0.5
T100_102 141 16 135 0.62 1.00 75.6 0.5 0.5
T100_103 183 23 153 0.64 0.98 119.7 0.6 0.5
T100_104 247 15 207 0.50 0.99 96.3 0.8 0.8
T100_105 168 10 125 0.55 0.99 83.1 0.5 0.5
T200_101 398 14 320 0.45 0.99 256.0 6.8 6.8
T200_102 424 17 355 0.42 0.98 260.7 8.1 8.0
T200_103 292 8 261 0.35 1.00 223.7 5.8 5.7
T200_104 247 9 196 0.45 0.99 226.2 4.5 4.5
T200_105 300 16 247 0.43 0.99 272.3 5.5 5.4
— —
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T500_101 21 852 0.43 0.99 147.2 146.3

T500_102 — 42 1,071 0.53 0.99 — 191.4 188.3
T500_103 — 41 1,079 0.43 1.00 — 191.3 189.1
T500_104 — 34 1,021 0.46 1.00 — 184.6 183.1
T500_105 — 32 914 0.43 0.99 — 160.7 159.2
T990_101 — 72 1,983 0.53 1.00 — 1,466.9 1,457.5
T990_102 — 46 1,650 0.47 1.00 — 1,168.5 1,148.0
T990_103 — 38 1,668 0.46 1.00 — 1,211.0 1,193.4
T990_104 — 35 1,817 0.48 1.00 — 1,232.8 1,217.0
T990_105 — 56 2,106 0.49 1.00 — 1,533.7 1,516.6
— Average 30.69 979.06 0.46 0.99 — 469.96 464.34

0.5% used to obtain the results (Table 7) of this study. Hence, in this
example the duration value of the reference point was taken as
72.45, which is 5% larger than the maximum duration value (69)
of the objective space. The hypervolume of the TP (HVTP ) is cal-
culated as $625,778 according to Eq. (15) as shown in Fig. 7. The
HVPFa is the hypervolume of PFa , and is calculated as $415,778
similarly. Finally, the hyperarea ratio of HVPFa is calculated as
0.664 using Eq. (14). According to the hyperarea ratio indicator
the optimal Pareto front TP is a much better solution than the
HVPFa , because it has a perfect hyperarea ratio of 1, which is
significantly larger than the hyperarea ratio of PFa .
Pareto Front Problem Performance Comparison
The performance of the proposed Pareto optimization uncrashing
heuristic is compared with two the state-of-the-art optimization
methods (Kandil and El-Rayes 2006; Aminbakhsh and Sonmez
2017) that are capable of solving the large-scale Pareto front prob-
lem. The results of the proposed uncrashing heuristic is first com-
pared with the results of the Pareto front particle swarm optimizer
(PFPSO) (Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2017) using the new problem
instances and considering two performance indicators, namely the
number of nondominated Pareto solutions and hyperarea ratio. In
computational experiments, for each problem PFPSO was termi-
nated when the CPU time of the uncrashing heuristic is reached.
The results that are provided in Table 7 show that the proposed
heuristic is significantly better than the PFPSO both in terms of
number of nondominated solutions and the hyperarea ratio. The
new uncrashing heuristic was able achieve an average of 979 so-
lutions with an average HR of 0.99, whereas PFPSO obtained an
average of 31 solutions with an average HR of 0.46. The HR values
of the proposed heuristic for the problems with optimal solutions
indicate that the new heuristic was able to obtain high-quality
solutions that are very close to the optimal Pareto front. The results
for the first problem T100_101 are shown in Fig. 8 to illustrate the
quality of the solutions of the uncrashing heuristic compared to
the PFPSO. All of the results of the uncrashing heuristic and
PFPSO for the new instances are provided in the Data Availability
Statement.
Three DTCTP instances that were created by Kandil and
El-Rayes (2006) including 180, 360 and 720 activities are used to
compare the performance of the new Pareto optimization uncrash-
ing heuristic with the performance of the global parallel and coarse-
grained genetic algorithms of Kandil and El-Rayes (2006) and
PFPSO (Aminbakhsh and Sonmez 2017). The genetic algorithms
were implemented using 50 processors on the tungsten supercom-
puting cluster, which was composed of 640 Dell PowerEdge 1750
servers, each with two Intel Xeon 3.2 GHz processors, 1.5 MB of
cache memory, and a total of 3 GB of SDRAM (Kandil and
El-Rayes 2006). The supercomputing cluster had a peak perfor-
mance of 6.4 Gflops.
Because only the number of nondominated Pareto solutions and
CPU time were reported in Kandil and El-Rayes (2006) and Kandil
(2005) these two performance indicators are used in comparisons.
Table 8 reveals that for the 180-activity problem the Pareto op-
timization uncrashing heuristic with 586 solutions in 3 s, was able
to achieve significantly more nondominated Pareto solutions in a
shorter time, compared to the coarse-grained GA (68 solutions
in 684 s), the global parallel GA (267 solutions in 2,556 s), and the
PFPSO (304 solutions in 21 s). The uncrashing heuristic (1,176
solutions in 31 s) also outperformed the coarse grained GA
(94 solutions in 1,836 s), the global parallel GA (232 solutions
in 10,404 s), and the PFPSO (536 solutions in 43 s) for the 360
activity problem as shown in Table 9. The coarse grained GA
and the global parallel GA over a cluster of 50 processors required
7,091 and 55,296 s to obtain 132 and 303 nondominated solutions
for the 720 activity problem as summarized in Table 10. The un-
crashing heuristic with a single processor achieved 2,356 solutions
for the same problem in 292 s, which was also significantly better
than the number of solutions obtained by the PFPSO (1,023 solu-
tions in 292 s). The computational experiments reveal that the
new uncrashing heuristic presents an advancement in both single-
objective and Pareto front optimization of large-sized projects as it
outperforms all of the state-of-the-art methods that were used for
solving the large-scale instances for both problems.

© ASCE 04020084-11 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2020, 146(8): 04020084

 8,140,000
Optimal
8,120,000 Heuristic
PFPSO

8,100,000
Project Cost ($)
8,080,000

8,060,000

8,040,000
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8,020,000
350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Project Duration (Days)

Fig. 8. Performance comparison of new heuristic and PFPSO for problem T100_101.

Table 8. Performance of uncrashing heuristic for the 180-activity problem Add-in Software
Number of CPU Number of
Algorithm processors time (s) solutions An add-in was developed for Microsoft Project 2019 to enhance the
practical use of the new uncrashing heuristic. The add-in can solve
Global parallel GA (Kandil 50 2,556 267a both single-objective and Pareto front discrete time-cost optimiza-
and El-Rayes 2006)
tion problems for medium and large-scale projects. The add-in in-
Coarse grained GA (Kandil 50 684 68a
and El-Rayes 2006)
tegrates the proposed heuristics to Microsoft Project to enable easy
PFPSO (Aminbakhsh and 1 21 304 use of the uncrashing heuristic for single-objective cost minimiza-
Sonmez 2017) tion and Pareto front optimization. Details regarding availability of
Uncrashing heuristic 1 3 586 the add-in are given in the Data Availability Statement.
(this study)
a
Kandil (2005).
Conclusions
In this paper, an uncrashing heuristic is presented for both single-
Table 9. Performance of uncrashing heuristic for the 360-activity problem objective cost minimization and Pareto front time-cost trade-off
problems. The contributions of the paper are threefold: (1) the
Number of Number of
Algorithm processors CPU time (s) solutions new uncrashing heuristic provides an advancement in time-cost
optimization of large-scale projects as it is outperforms state-
Global parallel GA (Kandil 50 10,404 232 of-the-art methods consistently for the single objective and Pareto
and El-Rayes 2006)
front problems and is capable of achieving successful solutions
Coarse grained GA (Kandil 50 1,836 94
and El-Rayes 2006)
within a reasonable CPU time for both problems; (2) new discrete
PFPSO (Aminbakhsh and 1 43 536 time-cost trade-off problems are created and majority of the prob-
Sonmez 2017) lems were solved to optimality to enable improved performance
Uncrashing heuristic 1 31 1,176 evaluation of state-of-the-art methods for both large-scale cost
(this study) minimization and Pareto front problems; and (3) a novel sched-
uling method is presented for effective rescheduling of the non-
critical activities to achieve solutions within short CPU time for
time-cost optimization of large-scale projects. The new scheduling
method can also be used for decreasing scheduling calculations of
Table 10. Performance of uncrashing heuristic for the 720-activity other heuristic and metaheuristic optimization methods requiring
problem
repetitive rescheduling of noncritical activities, such as resource
Number of CPU Number of Pareto leveling or cash flow optimization heuristics or metaheuristics.
Algorithm processors time (s) front solutions Hence the paper has multiple contributions to the literature and
Global parallel GA (Kandil 50 55,296 303 practice in particular for time-cost optimization of large-scale
and El-Rayes 2006) projects.
Coarse grained GA (Kandil 50 7,092 132 Despite the new uncrashing heuristic outperforms the state-of-
and El-Rayes 2006) the-art time-cost optimization methods, it requires long CPU times
PFPSO (Aminbakhsh and 1 292 1,023 for large size projects, particularly for the Pareto front problem.
Sonmez 2017) Future research efforts may focus on reducing the CPU time of
Uncrashing heuristic 1 292 2,356 heuristic and metaheuristic methods for the Pareto front problem,
(this study)
as achieving high-quality solutions for this problem requires

© ASCE 04020084-12 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2020, 146(8): 04020084

 significantly more time than the cost minimization problem.
Network reduction techniques that are not included in this heuristic
could be included in the future, such as exact, heuristic, and meta-
heuristic time-cost optimization methods to reduce the computa-
tional time requirements for solving the real-life–sized projects.
The mixed-integer programming method presented in this research
was able to achieve optimal solutions for the Pareto problem instan-
ces with up to 200 activities. Future exact methods that enable
determination of global optimal solutions for real-life–sized proj-
ects would facilitate improved performance evaluation of time-cost
optimization capabilities of state-of-the-art methods.
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by East Carolina University on 05/25/20. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
Data Availability Statement
Data generated by the authors or analyzed during the study are
available at https://blog.metu.edu.tr/rsonmez/research/dtctp, and
http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12622120/index.pdf.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided
by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey
(TÜBİTAK), under Grant No. 213M253.
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