Work Continuity Optimization for the Westerscheldetunnel Project in the Netherlands

The scheduling of projects has gained increasing attention since the introduction of PERT and CPM. Both the scheduling literature and the software scheduling packages rely on (meta-)heuristic and exact procedures to schedule projects under various assumptions. However, there is still room for improvement by incorporating specific characteristics into the scheduling procedures. In this paper we describe the scheduling of a real-life project that aims at the construction of a tunnel at the Westerschelde in the Netherlands. In doing so, we show that so-called work continuity is the main issue during the scheduling phase. No software package, however, is able to incorporate this requirement in an exact way. We compare different possible schedules under various assumptions and prove the necessity of this new feature.