Professional Documents
Culture Documents
P&S.2
Matrix Scheduling for
Repetitive Residential Construction
Neil D. Opfer, CCE
here are a number of scheduling techniques in use by the construction industry, including well-known applications such as
bar charts and network diagrams. The acceptance of these
scheduling techniques, while widespread, has not met with enthusiasm on the part of all participants in the construction process. Some
excuses for the lack of better use of scheduling techniques echo familiar lines such as thats a good idea, but our work is different.
These excuses are delivered while a competitor down the street is
successfully using network scheduling, for example, on the same
type of project. Some construction activities, however, such as repetitive residential construction, do not fit the standard project mold in
many respects. For these construction types, improved scheduling
techniques such as matrix schedules that blend advantages of bar
charts and network schedules together have been successful. The
matrix schedule provides an organization form that meets the tests of
logic, communication, and balance [6]. This paper relates the principles and practices behind matrix scheduling and the reasons this
technique offers a significant scheduling advantage for repetitive residential construction. In addition to improved management ability,
the correct scheduling technique can enable the builder/developer to
achieve increased dependability with trade contractors, suppliers,
banks/lenders, and customers.
P&S.2.1
P&S.2.2
field personnel to follow the days of the week than it is to be continually referring only to the date. As should be clear, the calculations
for the overall schedule rely only on the lower cell information. Each
formula for each cell is sequential, depending on the reference of the
preceding cell. Thus, delays in the schedule can be entered at any
point along the schedule and the matrix spreadsheet recalculated
without changing formulas. The other advantage with breaking the
schedule activities into days is the micro focus of the schedule.
Rather than attempting to track activities on a macro basis, the matrix provides a day-by-day focus to avoid getting off track. Due to
space limitations for this paper, only a portion of the actual matrix
schedule is shown (block of five houses out of 20) for illustration
purposes. The crews from these five houses would begin the next
block of five houses in staggered fashion to allow cycling of form
work and avoid the requirements for large crew buildups. As in all
types of scheduling, the availability of resources and this recognition
is essential to constructing a realistic schedule. As can be seen, the
matrix schedule format, besides providing the understandability inherent in the bar chart, provides activity breakdown and read-off on
a day-by-day basis. This is a relatively unusual feature for a schedule
output. The individual working with a software package can view
this information on the screen but actually having this information in
the compact tabular format of a spreadsheet is atypical. This is one
of the key advantages of this schedule format as contrasted to other
scheduling methods. The next block of houses would have staggered
dates in the next columns. The choice of activity description by cell
row (x-axis) or cell column (y-axis) is
an individual choice by the builder/
for Monday, January 30th wall form: = IF WEEKDAY (G6,2), < 5, G6 + 1, G6 + 3)
equation 1
developer. The examples shown are
for Tuesday, January 31st pour wall: = IF WEEKDAY (G7,2), < 5, G7 + 1, G7 + 3
equation 2
by cell row for activity description.
1.
REFERENCES
Elsayed, A., and Thomas O. Boucher. Analysis and Control of
Production Systems, Second Edition. New York: PrenticeHall, 1994.
2.
3.
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