Genetic Algorithms for Construction Time-Cost-Quality Trade-Off: A Road Project Case Study

Construction projects must satisfy time cost and quality requirements and Project Management is basically focused on this trade-off. In fact, in every project these three parameters are interdependent: it's impossible to change an element without conditioning at least one of the other two. The paper presents the development of a practical and automated system that uses an artificial intelligence technique for the planning of an infrastructural construction work, with the aim of optimizing time-cost-quality simultaneously. The model is developed as a multi-objective genetic algorithm to provide the capability of quantifying and considering quality in construction optimization. The purpose is to provide planners a useful technique to explore all possible project configurations.