Project delivery system selection via an overlapping strategy: A multi-mode resource-constrained scheduling model

• Develop a framework for deciding the overlapping strategy for project delivery system selection. • Build a multi-mode resource-constrained scheduling model. • Focus on the tradeoff between activity overlap and rework under resource constraints. • Heuristics and genetic algorithms are used to address the challenge of the extended search space. • Computational experiments and a case study on an Urban Rail Transit Line project have been conducted. The continuous evolution of the project delivery system (PDS) in recent years has posed a conundrum to practitioners in choosing the appropriate PDS for a project. This study tries to solve this challenge from the perspective of the overlapping strategy. An optimal PDS should balance overlapping and rework by analysing the relationships between project activities. This study develops a multiple overlapping modes resource-constrained project scheduling problem with a generalised precedence relations (MOM-RCPSP-GPR) model. This model generalises the traditional precedence constraints between activities and extends the search space for better resource usage compared to the current overlap literature. It adopts innovative hybrid methods based on heuristics and genetic algorithms. Computational experiments and a case study are conducted to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the framework and its application in practice. The results show that the proposed model can better reflect the overlapping role compared to existing research, and the adopted hybrid approach can effectively solve this problem. Hence, this study contributes to the literature on overlapping and PDS selection and has substantial practical applicability.