How the critical chain scheduling method is working for construction

Schedule planning and control are major tasks of construction project management. Traditional scheduling techniques, such as critical path method (CPM) and program evaluation and review technique (PERT), have been widely applied for several decades. However, schedule delays often occur in many of these construction projects. The critical chain scheduling (CCS) method is derived from the theory of constraints (TOC). CCS has been applied to the project management domain and it is also popular in the industrial engineering domain. It can make schedule planning and control more effective than traditional scheduling techniques. This study attempts to assess the feasibility of applying the CCS method to construction projects. Simplified cases are employed to demonstrate how CCS works and how it differs from the traditional CPM. This study concludes that the CCS method can be used for scheduling construction projects if all project participants change their conventional behaviors in CPM and understand fully the merits and pitfalls of CCS.