Strengths and shortcomings of methodologies for production planning and control of construction projects: a systematic literature review and future perspectives

Several methodologies for production planning and control have been introduced over the years in the construction industry. However, in this industry, it is not uncommon that projects are delayed and go over the assigned budget. In this study, we performed a Systematic Literature Review to investigate the strengths and shortcomings of methodologies used for production planning and control on-site. To consider all of the main aspects of the execution process, we studied activity, location and object-based methodologies. As main findings it emerged that the analysed methodologies are difficult to apply in practice and that they support in a limited way the assessment in real-time of the construction progress and project status, the early identification of problems as well as recovering actions. To support practitioners in deciding about one or another methodology, or to build on a hybrid one, the paper proposes a classification of strengths and shortcomings from a project planning, scheduling and monitoring perspective.