Earthmoving is the process of moving and processing soil from one location to another to alter an existing land surface into a desired configuration. Highways, dams, and airports are typical examples of heavy earthmoving projects. Over the years, con
struction managers have devised ways to determine the quantities of material to be moved from one place to another. Various types of soil (soft earth, sand, hard clay, …, etc.) create different level of difficulty of the problem. Earthmoving problem has traditionally been solved using mass diagram method or variety of operational research techniques. However, existing models do not present realistic solution for the problem. Multiple soil types are usually found in cut sections and specific types of soil are required in fill sections. Some soil types in cut sections are not suitable to be used in fill sections and must be disposed of. In this paper a new mathematical programming model is developed to find-out the optimum allocation of earthmoving works. In developing the proposed model, different soil types are considered as well as variation of unit cost with earth quantities moved. Suggested borrow pits and/or disposal sites are introduced to minimize the overall earthmoving cost. The proposed model is entirely formulated using the programming capabilities of VB6 while LINDO is used to solve the formulated model to get the optimum solution. An example project is presented to show how the developed model can be implemented.
