Automated draft plan and schedule generation using templates, physical breakdown structures and expert systems

Even for the most well-intentioned companies, the commitment required for the initial drafting of a plan is a real barrier to developing a useful schedule for a construction project. This thesis explores how artificial intelligence and expert systems have and can be used for automating the generation of plans and schedules. The goal is to demonstrate how expert systems with an editable rule base can be combined with standard templates of modifiable, predefined sequencing, scoping, and scaling knowledge within a project management system in order to generate draft plans and schedules automatically. Findings from a thorough literature review and observations about the general characteristics of projects provide a backdrop to explain the philosophy that has led to this approach. The breakdown of projects into different views is discussed and the important role of the physical and process views in automated schedule generation is emphasised. Implementation details and worked examples, including a thorough explanation of rule syntax and predicate logic, are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and capabilities of the proposed approach.Applied Science, Faculty ofCivil Engineering, Department ofGraduat