Functionality as a Key Concept for Integrated Project Planning and Scheduling Methods

The construction industry has made significant efforts to address the issues of low productivity caused by inefficient construction planning and scheduling. This issue led to more focus on integrating scheduling methods in existing studies without comprehensively analyzing the integration's goals and objectives. In this regard, this study aims to present and analyze a holistic list of integrated scheduling methods' functionalities in the construction sector. In this paper, the underlying concept and main objective of scheduling methods are considered as their functionality. A multistep methodology is adopted for this research. First, the authors identified integrated scheduling methods and their functionalities. Second, social network analysis (SNA) and Pareto analysis were used to assess and analyze the significance of the identified functionalities. The findings indicated that improving planning reliability, increasing transparency, identifying and eliminating wastes, and considering the continuous flow of work that follows the lean principles are the most important employed functionalities in the integrated scheduling methods. Also, the last planner system, building information modeling, simulation methods, and location-based management systems are mainly used common scheduling methods in the integrated scheduling methods. Ultimately, this study will aid project stakeholders in better understanding of integrated scheduling methods by defining the functionality concept of scheduling methods.