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Evaluation of Line of Balance Method In View Of Hidden Idle Times and Their Costs (Case Study: Housing Units in Iraq)

This study is dealing with scheduling of repetitive construction projects by using Line of Balance (LOB) method and taking a construction project as a case study. The project is consisting of 100 identical housing units. LOB is used in scheduling repetitive construction projects and it is suitable for medium to long-range scheduling. It is resource-based technique. This means ensuring continuity of work and efficient use of resources. The optimum number of crews is selected so that all crews will perform the same number of units in the same period of time. This approach is essentially the line of balance concept. It is shown in this study that the LOB method is easy method in scheduling repetitive projects in that it is easy to obtain graphically the needed data such as start or finish of each activity. The disadvantage of LOB method is that there is a need to adjust the resulted graph to take in account delays in start times resulting from several reasons. One reason is to take in account the differences between the numbers of units assigned to the work gangs. Another is to take in account the constraint of continuity. Making these adjustments leads to additional costs resulted from hidden idle times and from lengthening the duration of the whole project. One of the main objectives in scheduling repetitive projects is to minimize idle times that is to make resources working without many interruptions. In this study the resulting cost from adjustment reached about 4% from the total cost of the project. There is ability to make an alternative LOB graph that has compressed work and gets less period and less cost of project in the same time. Further research work is recommended to get such LOB scheduling.