Resource Constrained Project Scheduling by Harmony Search Algorithm

The construction industry is nonhomogeneous and also managing construction projects are more difficult in today's world. Construction projects are huge and contractors want to accomplish them within a short time in this fast changing era. Therefore, the time and resource have to be managed for a successful construction project management. Resource leveling is one of the primary tools used for managing resources. The target is leveling the resources within a minimum time period to complete the project successfully. Resource constrained project scheduling problems (RCPSP) are a Non-deterministic Polynomial-time hard (NP-hard) problem therefore heuristic methods can be used to solve it. This paper presents a harmony search method for solving the RCPSP. In order to compare the performance of the developed software three examples were chosen from the literature. Computational results indicate that the harmony search method is more effective, rapid and suitable for the RCPSP than existing solutions.