Spatio-temporal optimization of construction elevator planning in high-rise building projects

Appropriate construction elevator planning is beneficial for successfully completing high-rise building projects. Construction elevator planning typically remains unchanged throughout a high-rise building project or seldom involves the designation of service days, which causes such planning not to respond effectively to variable transportation demands and adversely affects the possibility of further optimization. Another limitation is that the installation and dismantlement dates of construction elevators, which are highly important when multiple construction elevators are used, cannot be explicitly determined in construction elevator planning. To solve these weaknesses, this paper proposes an approach to assign construction elevator cabs to serve designated days and floors based on actual transportation demands from the perspective of spatio-temporal optimization with mixed-integer programming. The experimental case study results show that the presented planning can significantly reduce the total cost when compared to other planning and can provide evidence and explanation for determining the installation and dismantlement dates of construction elevators.