Project scheduling of the Ős-Dráva program, and overview of scheduling

Abstract

AIM OF THE PAPER

The so called Ormánság micro region is one of the most lagging areas in Hungary and Europe. It is a well describable area upon an ethnographic approach. Currently planning area covers three LAU 1 units from which two belongs to Hungary’s most lagging regions with deep economic, social problems. Without comprehensive development plans its state worsens rapidly. The Ős-Dráva program is a complex spatial development program that was established to emend the current problems. Complexity means that it effects many issues from agricultural land usages, development of economic structures, infrastructure developments, and tourism to a construction of a water-management system that hides various engineering challenges. The papers goal introduce the Ős-Dráva program, to highlight the main topics of the project and to show the importance of project scheduling.

METHODOLOGY

Project scheduling is one of the core functions of project management and can affect highly the effectiveness, the resource allocation of the project and can highlight the deficiencies in it. Thus scheduling is a key task and in case of projects that are as complex as the Ős-Dráva it is not a trivial question at all. It raises many questions of which are many deeply methodological. In this case the program specific problems are the uniqueness of the problem, the links between problems, the utilized technology, the goals, the returns, and the practicability. The paper searches for a solution for these questions, and introduces a new a sampling-based bi-criteria hybrid harmony search metaheuristic for the resource-constrained project-scheduling problem with uncertain activity durations and cash flows.

MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS

The result of the new approach is a makespan minimal robust proactive schedule, which is immune against the uncertainties in the activity durations and which can be evaluated from a cost-oriented point of view on the set of the uncertain-but-bounded duration and cost parameters using a sampling-based approximation.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The case shown in the paper highlights the schedule of the project as a separate chapter, but leaves it totally empty. This fact is enough to highlight the readers’ attention to the reasons for this. It is probable that the project managers realized the importance of the project scheduling when they were preparing their work, but they also admitted the obscurity caused by the many uncertain factors. The method shown in the paper is an innovating direction of the ongoing researches. Most of the commercial software’s and the routine practices of project managers lack the current scientific results, but they could be one that are able to answer questions raised by large projects similar to the Ős-Dráva Program.