Abstract: Scheduling of construction projects is a crucial problem for planning engineers and schedulers. The problem is somehow easy to solve if there are no resource constraints, no season-dependent activities, no predetermined date restrictions. If all these difficulties, and more, are to be considered, the problem becomes highly complicated necessitating special techniques to be used. For these cases the techniques adopted are mathematical ones and metaheuristic methods. Last years have shown that metaheuristic methods are used for this purpose in ever increasing numbers. There are two main approaches in applications of meta-heuristic methods to construction scheduling projects as to the formation of the main unknown vector. In the first approach the unknown vector is formed by the list of activities giving the order of priority of their executions. In the second approach, the vector is formed by start dates of the activities. A quick review of the literature indicates that the first approach is much more popular than the second one although the second one, that can be called as a new trend, is much more promising as shown by applications in the literature. The presentation compares these approaches and gives information about proactive and reactive scheduling. It is also noted that in scheduling projects within dangerous environments, as on space bodies, new way of applications of metaheuristic algorithms might be preferable for eliminating unwanted situations.

Biography: Dr. Toklu obtained his BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from Middle East Technical University, Ankara Turkey and his doctorate from Universite de Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI), Paris, France. In his professional life he directed and/or supervised numerous giant projects in Turkey, including a pontoon bridge, two long span suspension bridges, a light railed transportation system, and several motorways. In academic life he taught in several universities starting with Middle East Technical University, serving in many cases as Department Head or Dean. Being a member of several technical and scientific international and national organizations, he is currently affiliated to Beykent University in Istanbul, Turkey. His research interests include application of optimization techniques to engineering, space civil engineering, nonlinear analysis of structures, engineering education and construction scheduling. He is the author of several books, book chapters and scientific articles. He has organized many congresses and served as keynote speaker in many international meetings. Dr. Toklu is the developer of the method “Total Potential Optimization using Meta-heuristic Algorithms (TPO/MA)” which is shown to be more successful than classical methods in analyzing non-linear structural systems, under-constrained structures, unstable structures, degenerate structures and structures with non-unique deformed shapes.