Researching on Application of Multiple Objective Differential Evolution Algorithm to Solve Time-cost Trade Off Problems in Construction Projects

Along with quality criteria, time and cost are two crucial factors playing an important role in the success of a construction project. However, a number of current construction projects are related with the limitation of the budget or financial source. In construction industry, reducing the implementation time of the project without increasing the budget will be considerably beneficial for the owners. Therefore, trade-off optimization between time and cost is essential for the improvement of benefit of construction projects. This study presents a novel optimization model named Multiple Objective Differential Evolution (MODE) algorithm to deal with the time-cost trade-off problems. A numerical case study of an apartment project is used to illustrate the application of MODE. The research result shows that non-dominated solutions generated by MODE assist project managers in choosing appropriate plans. In addition, the sufficiency of the proposed optimization algorithm, MODE, is verified by comparing the solutions of this model with those of other commonly-used optimization algorithm including Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II), Multiple Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO)