Abstract: Rainfall is regarded as a major uncertainty factor that has adverse
impacts on productivity and duration of highway construction activities. In
practice, given the location, type, start date, and original duration of the
activities, a common approach for construction schedulers to assess the effect
of rain is by adding a certain percentage of time to tasks. However, this
method depends mainly on the experience and subjective judgment of the
schedulers, who may be unfamiliar with the rainfall pattern and its impact on
productivity of the operations, and thus, oftentimes produces inaccurate
results. This paper presents a model that uses historical daily rainfall data
and experts' knowledge, and employs fuzzy set concept for assessing the impact
of rain on project completion. Variables considered by the model include soil
drainage, exposure level, and adverse consequence on productivity. The result
of this study is a tool for use in estimating indirect rain impact on highway
construction activities, and as such it can be used to make the decision to
work or not to work. Examples of how to use the model are illustrated.
