Schedule-cost optimization in high-rise buildings considering uncertainty

Purpose The paper aims to develop a useful tool that can reliably and accurately find the critical paths of high-rise buildings and provide optimal solutions considering the uncertainty based on Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) to enhance project implementation performance by assisting site workers and project managers in high-rise building engineering. Design/methodology/approach This research proposes an approach integrating the improved nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) considering uncertainty and delay scenarios simulated by MCS with the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution. Findings The results demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of generating optimal solutions, which can improve the construction performance of high-rise buildings and guide the implementation management for shortening building engineering project schedule and cost under the delay conditions. Research limitations/implications In this study, only the construction data of the two floors was focused due to the project at the construction stage, and future work can analyze the whole construction stage of the high-rise building to examine the performance of the approach, and the multi-objective optimization (MOO) only considered two factors as objectives, where more objectives, such as schedule, cost and quality, can be expanded in future. Practical implications The approach proposed in this research can be successfully applied to the construction process of high-rise buildings, which can be a guidance basis for optimizing the performance of high-rise building construction. Originality/value The innovations and advantages derived from the proposed approach underline its capability to handle project construction scheduling optimization (CSO) problems with different performance objectives under uncertainty and delay conditions.