Background
During the bid phase for a major industrial plant, the bid team leveraged ALICE to evaluate schedule feasibility and optimization opportunities.
With labor identified as one of the highest risk factors, the team focused on determining optimal workforce sizing and understanding how productivity changes could impact project duration.
Using ALICE, the team ran multiple what-if simulations in minutes to rapidly assess resource risk and identify which trades were most critical to project delivery—all before construction began.
Their goal was to answer questions like:
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What is the optimal number of people required?
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How does labor productivity affect the schedule?
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Which crews are most critical to on-time delivery?
Key insights ALICE helped uncover:
Resource Optimization
The team ran 10 scenarios to identify the optimal workforce configuration. ALICE automatically adjusted resource allocations to avoid over-allocation while maintaining schedule integrity.
The analysis helped uncover that the project maintained the same overall duration with a 44% reduction in peak workforce requirements.
Labor Productivity Analysis
To test assumptions around labor productivity, the team ran 5+ scenarios. ALICE surfaced several critical insights:
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A 10% slowdown across all crews added 21 days.
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The same slowdown on just Underground Civil and Concrete crews added 18 days— identifying these as the most sensitive to the schedule.
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A 10% increase in productivity across all had no effect on the overall project duration.
The Outcome
ALICE helped the team identify where productivity had the greatest impact on the schedule, enabling them to build a more competitive and risk-aware bid — ultimately helping the EPC contractor win the project.
