Proposed genetic algorithms for construction site lay out

The positioning of temporary facilities on a construction site is an area of research which has been recognised as important but which has received relatively little attention. In this paper, a genetic algorithm is proposed to solve the problem in which m facilities are to be positioned to n available sites such that the total cost of construction and interactive cost due to facility layout constraints are minimised. A sequence-based genetic formulation of the problem is presented. Genetic crossover and mutation operators are developed for the problem and their performance evaluated and compared on an example project. The results obtained suggest that the different operators perform very differently but that one could be relied on to find the optimum. Overall, experiments suggest that the technique will prove useful when tackling real problems.