An Expert Systems Approach to Highway Construction Scheduling

The goal of this project was to assist design engineers in developing more realistic construction schedules for a wide variety of IDOT projects. The research involved conducting in-depth interviews with subject matter experts in highway construction firms; reviewing the scholarly literature and published research on expert systems in highway construction scheduling and productivity rates for highway construction activities; analyzing historical weather records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to determine the probable periods during which temperature-sensitive construction operations could be conducted; and synthesizing the expert knowledge developed from all sources in a software tool to assist designers in developing schedules for a variety of typical highway construction activities. The report includes the user manual and documentation for a computer program, the Illinois Construction Scheduling Expert System (ICSES), developed using Visual Studio 2008. ICSES provides 12 road and bridge project templates, each containing typical controlling items and their sequential relationships, links controlling items to the schedule using historical temperature trends at the project location, and provides expert guidance on how to select appropriate production rates for controlling items. The output provides a bar chart schedule with completion date, number of calendar days and working days and tabulates the Estimate of Time Required.Illinois Department of Transportation ICT R27-86published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe