EURO Plenary speaker Prof. Dr. Erik Demeulemeester will consider the proactive and reactive resource-constrained project scheduling problem in which the durations of project activities are characterised by uncertainty. Under such conditions, the baseline schedule that typically is constructed before project execution might not hold for a long time unless a lot of safety is built into the schedule. During the actual execution of a project, this baseline schedule may indeed suffer from disruptive events, causing the actually realised activity start times to deviate from the predicted baseline start times.

This presentation focuses on robust project scheduling, in particular the development of effective and efficient proactive and reactive scheduling procedures. Proactive scheduling aims at generating robust baseline schedules that carry sufficient protection against any possible schedule disruptions that may occur during project execution. Reactive scheduling procedures aim at repairing the baseline schedule when the built-in protection fails during the execution of the project. The fundamentals of state of the art proactive/reactive project scheduling approaches will be discussed alongside key directions for future research.