Optimization of production schedule : Study based on implementing new planning techniques in Peab Sweden AB Sweden

Now a day’s there is dramatic change from traditional to digital information processing in construction industry. This change can be visualized in the project concept stage where it now has accessibility to join all the data in one place. Location-based planning technique simplifies scheduling by visualizing the schedule efficiently and has many advantages such as might shortened the project period by about 10 - 20 % if the company uses location-based technology, reducing risks in many ways by maintaining production continuity and identify collisions between things etc. Vico Office software has been used for Location based planning technique and in this thesis. The purpose of this thesis work was to demonstrate how location -based planning technology change the scheduling stage in Peab, potentially reducing the project time. The goal of this thesis was to explore possibilities to reduce the project duration. The housing project Tingvalla altitude was the designated project to study. Tingvalla height located in central Karlstad and was completed in spring 2013 with Peab as the general contractor using traditional processing technology. Peab's goal was to create attractive housing close to downtown. Information about location-based planning was collected and then existing calculations of the project was used to establish the schedule. The schedule was then set up in Vico Office which is a sovereign planning program to apply location-based technology. The planned schedule in Vico Office was compared with the planned schedule by traditional way and observed that using Vico Office, there was a reduction in the duration of the project about 9 percent. Then compared the planned timing in Vico Office against the real case, and observed that the traditional plan provides approximately 1500 person hours less. There are uncertainties in the results was mainly due to sub-contractors are not considered in the scheduling, which can possibly extend the total project time. Uncertainty may also be due to some spreadsheet records were not entirely properly prepared but was elected anyway to start from the calculation. Vico Office offers great potential at the planning stage; collisions can be detected and minimizing the risk of the project, in addition visualizes unused time between activities to optimize the schedule. One of the strongest sides in Vico Office is that scheduling is done location-based not task based, by linking logical connections between things. This contributes to a revision in a choice of activities, the change in the entire schedule implemented with Gantt chart