Block models for improved earthwork allocation planning in linear infrastructure construction

Earthwork planning is considered in this article and a generic block partitioning and modelling approach is devised to provide strategic plans of various levels of detail. Conceptually, this new approach is more accurate and comprehensive than others, for instance those that are section based. In response to recent environmental concerns, the metric for decision making was fuel consumption or emissions. Haulage distance and gradient, however, are important components of these metrics and are also included. Advantageously, the fuel consumption metric is generic and captures the physical difficulties of travelling over inclines of different gradients, which is consistent across all hauling vehicles. For validation, the proposed models and techniques are applied to a real-world road project. The numerical investigations demonstrate that the models can be solved with relatively little CPU time. The proposed block models also result in solutions of superior quality, i.e. they have reduced fuel consumption and cost. Furthermore, the plans differ considerably from those based solely on a distance-based metric, thus demonstrating a need for the industry to reflect on its current practices.