HIERARCHICAL APPROACH TO PROJECT-PLANNING - THE CASE OF A PETROLEUM PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION

Projects exposed to an uncertain environment must be adapted to deal w ith the effective integration of various planning elements and the opt imization of project parameters. Time, cost, and quality are the prime objectives of a project that need to be optimized to fulfill the owne r's goal. In an uncertain environment, there exist many other conflict ing objectives that may also need to be optimized These objectives are characterized by varying degrees of conflict. Moreover an uncertain e nvironment also causes several changes in the project plan throughout its life, demanding that the project plan be totally flexible. Goal pr ogramming (GP) a multiple criteria decision making technique, offers a good solution for this project planning problem. There the planning p roblem is considered from the owner's perspective, which leads to clas sifying the project up to the activity level GP is applied separately at each level, and the formulated models are integrated through inform ation flow. The flexibility and adaptability of the models lies in the ease of updating the model parameters at the required level through c hanging priorities and/or constraints and transmitting the information to other levels. The hierarchical model automatically provides integr ation among various element of planning. The proposed methodology is a pplied in this paper to plan a petroleum pipeline construction project , and its effectiveness is demonstrated.