Most dredging projects are chosen based on cost, availability, and dredging requirements. Budget cycles, dredge fleet availability, and environmental permits often cause delays in contract completion. We know from experience that optimizing dredge fleet planning can result in significant cost and operational savings.
This planning challenge can be formulated as a mathematical constraint programming problem. Dredge fleet scheduling and total cost are governed by environmental constraints on available dredge time and by the cost and production rates of the available dredge fleet. After formulating and solving the planning challenge using constraint programming and calculating the solution using optimization solvers, a sensitivity analysis can be performed to assess the overall impact of the modeled hard and soft constraints.
This means that the cost of new and/or proposed environmental constraints can be quantified and compared to the total dredging budget for the entire dredging fleet planning problem. Similarly, the total savings and additional efficiencies achieved by expanding the dredge fleet or increasing the productivity of individual dredges can be objectively calculated and used for decision support and long-term dredge fleet planning.
Solvice's optimization algorithms provide effective fleet planning while remaining committed to environmental regulations.
