Research On Integrated Management Of Construction Schedule And Cost Based On Critical Chain

Construction project management is faced with complex natural and social environment, and its implementation progress is full of changes and risks so that the managers are trying their best to reduce the subsequent uncertainty to achieve process target and cost goal and pursue higher efficiency and benefit. In the current project management, the construction period and cost departments are often uses independent procedures for recording and reporting, leading to low construction efficiency rather than a win-win situation. How to keep the balance between time and cost under the guarantee of construction quality has become the common concern of both the owner and the contractor. In the 1990s, Israel scholar Goldratt proposed a new method for project schedule, Critical Chain, based on his theory of constraints. Considering resource constraints and human behavior factors in construction, the Critical Chain Theory makes up for the defects of traditional management methods. The Critical Chain is currently the most advanced progress management theory and in following the CPM and PERT, it has achieved a great progress. In addition, with the continuous development of BIM (Building Information Model), the scope of its reform has stretched in the cost management field, trying to break the barrier of information in construction process, and it can be called a kind of integrated management. However, there’s no effective schedule and cost integrated management system yet. To improve the low efficiency of the construction project management, this paper designs the schedule and cost integrated plan, improves the traditional integrated management methods, builds schedule and cost integrated management model based on the critical chain, and through the comparison and analysis of an actual case to verify the feasibility and validity of the model.Specifically, the main contents of this article are in the following:The first part is the introduction. Introducing the research background and purpose of this article, this part raises that the period and cost of the project is both the necessity and importance of integrated management, which leads to research subject.The second part is the literature review. This part expounds the Critical Chain theory and the literature review, the progress and the concept of integrated management and common methods and literature review, laying a knowledge and theoretical basis for the research behind.The third part proposes a schedule and cost integrated planning methods based on the Critical Chain, and through a concrete engineering example explains how to use this method, and as well its feasibility is verified.The fourth part improves the traditional Earned Value method and the Critical Chain monitoring method of the buffer, introduces a new evaluation means to apply to the Critical Chain integration management.The fifth part raises a method of the critical chain project schedule and cost integrated management model and analyzes the logic application process.The sixth part quotes a specific engineering case, selecting of a controlling case in a practical engineering for the actual application of the model to prove that the model is feasible and effective in practical application.The seventh part is summary and outlook, putting forward the article deficiency and future research direction.To sum up, this article mainly solves the three technical problems. Firstly, how to make an integrated plan of schedule and cost in the planning phase based on critical chain. Secondly, what controlling methods can be used to get data acquisition, analysis and feedback in the integrated management of time and cost. Thirdly, how to apply the integrated management model into reality. The results of this research not only can be directly used in construction project management, but also can be used in the further research and development of computer aided decision-making system for construction project integration management, as the basis of promoting the application of BIM technology in the project schedule and cost management.