A Critical Literature Review on Study of Critical Chain Scheduling in Construction Projects

Abstract

Every successful construction project has to be completed within the budgeted cost and the scheduled time.
Constraints affect the project success. Therefore, proper management required to reduce the constraints. One of the
traditional methods used worldwide is Critical Path Method (CPM) which leads to ineffective scheduling. In CPM, the
task estimates are based on guesswork which leads to increase in the project completion duration. Also, the availability
of resources is not considered by the scheduler to develop optimal schedules. The shortcomings of CPM are overcome
by, a new project management method called “Critical Chain Project Management” (CCPM) was developed in 1990 by
Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt after which various additions are added to his research. CCPM is based on the philosophy of
“Theory of Constraints” (TOC) which believes that every system has a constraint & without eliminating this constraint
the system cannot progress. The developing countries like India mostly face the problems of project delays so CCPM can
be applied to save the projects from time and cost overruns. The aim of the paper is to describe the current status of
research on CCPM and exploring opportunities to apply CCPM to construction projects and to compute buffer size by
some methods. A scope of future study of detailed CCPM model can be developed based on TOC, and the developed
model can be applied to on-going projects and future projects in India.