| A variety of methods have already been developed in the past for planning and scheduling construction projects, including the CPM method, the LSM method and the simulation methods. One of the biggest problems with the existing methods is that each of them has a limited scope of application, yet most construction projects have mixed features that extend beyond the boundaries of the individual tools. Second, all of the existing methods have some fundamental limitations that restricted their abilities in the modeling of many realistic situations. Thirdly, the existing methods are becoming more and more complicated to learn and to use.;This study aims to develop a new planning and scheduling method that is simple in form, powerful in function, and universally applicable to all types of construction projects. The proposed method is based on the system theory and formalized with the DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) specification. A set of graphical modeling elements have been designed so the user can easily utilize the full capacity of this method without any specialized knowledge in the underlying theory or any computer languages.;The proposed method has been applied to four real-world projects including a typical regular project, a typical linear project, a typical repetitive project and a project of mixed features. By comparing these models with those built with the existing methods, it was demonstrated that the proposed method has advantages in the scope of application, accuracy of modeling, form of representation and multi-level modeling. |
