A Mathematical Job Allocation Model to Maximize Career Development Opportunities for Construction Workers

The job allocation models used in construction projects have been designed mainly to meet the objectives of the employers such as maximizing productivity and tended to pay inadequate attention to meet the needs and objectives of construction workers. Meeting the objectives of workers, however, is a basic component of corporate social responsibility and vital to improve job satisfaction among construction workers. Among various items on wish-list of workers, availability of career development opportunities in projects stands out as a key factor affected considerably by job allocation decisions. This paper presents an innovative mathematical model for optimization of task allocation in construction projects to maximize the availability of career development opportunities to individual construction workers, paving the way for their career development. A Euclidean distance function in n-space is specified as objective function of career development which measures and compares the distance between ideal skill levels of employees to initial skill levels and developed ones after job allocation. The proposed model is applied to an illustrative case project involving the allocation of tasks to workers with different skill levels in a construction contractor company. Results show a successful task allocation which has contributed to workers’ occupational development and made them closer to their ideal skill level.