Multi-objective mathematical programming approach to construction laborer assignment with equity consideration

Abstract

Construction laborer assignment is the assignment of laborers in a team to the tasks for a daily work in a construction project. This study proposes a mathematical programming approach to examine the optimal construction laborer assignment problem with the objectives of productivity and occupational health and safety while considering equity between laborers. Several linearization techniques are presented to transform the mathematical programming model into a mixed-integer linear program, which can be solved by off-the-shelf mixed-integer linear solvers. The proposed model is applied to extensive numerical experiments and the results show that the mathematical programming approach outperforms a conventional heuristic by over 10% in terms of job completion time. This implies considerable overhead, equipment, and manpower savings for the construction industry.