Abstract/Summary

Projects planning and scheduling in the construction industry, and also in other industries, is reflected by many different types of research and empirical to be critical to project success. Traditional project planning methods, for instance, CPM, are used and still uses as managerial assistance in different industries of construction, IT, defence and oil and gas projects. However, many projects developed by these methods are failed to predict and deliver the final duration of projects at completion point. The results are deterministic and unreliable to deliver the project objectives. This is originated from ignorance of understanding the cause and effects relationships of different internal and external elements. Increased complexity is one of the fundamental issues causing project failure. Planning systems must deal with increased complexity, which traditional systems were never designed for. Projects can be technically complex, organisationally complex, and environmentally complex. This research uses a bottom-up approach and designed to understand and develop a conceptual framework to map complexity and improve the flow of information in the project planning stage of construction projects in Iran. The expectation is to understand the realistic view of project scheduling considering projects complexity and uncertainties and project factors interactions as a result. This is based on project scheduling with simulations using system dynamics, documents and feedback of questionnaires from the construction sector of Iran. The questionnaires are used to justify the proposed conceptual framework. The proposed framework provides an enhanced sympathetic of project behavior. The contribution is to understand the causes of complexity in construction projects to overcome the shortcoming of tradition project planning and scheduling methods.