| dc.description.abstract | The Taiwan government has closely focused on implementing effective measures for the structural reinforcement of buildings that do not meet the standards of current building codes. Of particular interest are buildings that do not meet the current seismic codes implemented after the 921 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan. Seismic retrofitting is one method of upgrading the condition of these buildings to meet current architectural standards. Seismic retrofitting methods include the use of reinforced concrete jacketing for columns; the addition of wind walls, shear walls, and shear walls with openings; and the addition of composite columns and steel braces. The reinforcement of columns with concrete jacketing is the most employed method for stabilizing underqualified structures commonly. Because construction projects for the stabilization of school buildings are always undertaken and completed during schools’ summer vacations, many of these projects are necessarily completed in limited time and on limited budgets for both prime and indirect costs. Therefore, to meet these limits, effective scheduling of work items through the application of optimization theory was crucial to the school building projects examined in this study.
Optimization theory, or the selection of the most effective element through the mathematical modeling of various available alternatives, has been established for many aspects of construction, including foundations of buildings, the overlap of work items, difficulties in compartmentalizing work items, and the types of workers required and the time they require. For the most optimal timing of work-item scheduling, the most effective result was achieved by utilizing the mathematical modeling software LINGO (Lindo Systems, Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) in connection with an Excel spreadsheet listing some of the limiting conditions. A case study of retrofit engineering at the Center-West Building at Jen-Ho Junior High School in Taoyuan City was conducted for this research. In this study, a sensitivity analysis was performed for each variable on a hypothetical work-item schedule and the work-item schedule from the LINGO analysis; the results of the analyses were then compared. In summary, using LINGO for analysis of work-item scheduling can effectively reduce the costs and duration of construction projects. Additionally, the best guidelines for work-item scheduling were obtained from varying the parameters of the sensitivity analyses to determine the lowest cost under practical construction conditions. | en_US |