Defining work-zones for resource allocation in Hong Kong public housing project construction using heuristic rules and operations simulation

In Hong Kong, 6-day construction cycle always being used for constructing one typical floor of concrete building superstructure in a week. Work-zones are defined in the working platform for better allocation of limited resources. Once the work-zones are defined, the resources (labour, plant, materials) will be allocated to a specific zone to deliver the works on a particular day of the 6-day construction cycle. In practice, the definition of work-zone is dependent on the experience of project manager. Yet, there is no past research studied the evaluation of work-zone definition schemes. As such, in this research study, three heuristic rules are proposed for choosing better scheme of work-zone. The heuristic rules are based on (i) lengths of work-zone dividing line, (ii) fluctuations of daily duration, and (iii) utilisation rates of resource. To illustrate the steps of evaluating the scheme, an illustrative example is given. To illustrate the method application of the rules, a practical case study of constructing a 40-storey housing is given. The proposed rules were verified based on sensitivity analysis and expert validation. Conclusions are drawn by expressing the contributions and limitations of the proposed rules, followed by suggesting future research works.