Managing Portfolios of Projects Under Uncertainty with Application to Construction Activities

项目往往在相当不确定的环境中进行。不确定性可能反映在具体任务的持续时间和结果中，以及应用于这些任务的资源的效力上。在这些不确定的条件下，项目和计划经理必须决定如何在具有竞争需求的许多项目中分配和管理稀缺资源。建造业的需求尤其迫切。目前，项目计划和调度的算法要么忽略资源约束而考虑任务工期的不确定性，要么忽略任务工期的不确定性而关注资源受限调度，本研究致力于在现实的多项目计划和调度环境中开发新的计算易处理的资源分配建模工具。我们使用的数学方法的一个关键方面是，它提供了一种明确的机制来评估项目(或项目组合)的计划进度和进度变得不可行(由于任务持续时间和结果的不确定性)的风险水平之间的权衡。这项研究显然适用于建筑项目，以及许多其他工业、商业和公共部门的应用。我们的方法将创建重要的新工具，供项目和计划经理在许多类型的企业中使用。此外，由于需要在存在不确定性的情况下工作是工程实践的一个关键要素，因此为学生提供接触不确定性下的项目管理的机会是很重要的。为此，我们将在本提案所述研究的基础上开发案例研究和工程项目硕士学位。这些案例研究和项目将支持三个项目的教育：本科土木工程，以及工程管理和系统工程的工程硕士项目。

Projects are often undertaken in an environment of considerable uncertainty. Uncertainty may be reflected in the duration and outcomes of specific tasks, as well as in the effectiveness of resources applied to them. Project and program managers must decide, in these uncertain conditions, how to allocate and manage scarce resources across many projects that have competing needs. The construction industry is one in which this need is particularly acute. Today, project planning and scheduling is done using algorithms that either ignore the resource constraints and consider uncertainty in task duration, or ignore the uncertainty in task duration and focus on resource-constrained scheduling.This research focuses on developing new computationally tractable modeling tools for allocating resources under uncertainty in realistic multi-project planning and scheduling environments. A key aspect of the mathematical approach we are using is that it provides an explicit mechanism to evaluate the tradeoff between the planned schedule for a project (or portfolio of projects) and the level of risk that the schedule will become infeasible (as a result of uncertainties in the task durations and outcomes). This research has obvious application to construction projects, as well as to many other industrial, commercial and public sector applications. Our approach will create significant new tools for use by project and program managers in many types of undertakings. Furthermore, since the need to work in the presence of uncertainty is a critical element of engineering practice, it is important to provide students with an exposure to project management under uncertainty. To this end, we will develop cases studies and a master of engineering project based on the research described in this proposal. Those case studies and project will support education in three programs: undergraduate civil engineering, and the Master of Engineering programs in engineering management and systems engineering.