Dear scheduling researcher,

We are delighted to announce the talk given by Maria Elena Bruni (Uni of Calabria). The title is " Enhancing project resilience: a risk-averse approach to payment delays ". The seminar will take place on Zoom on Wednesday, November 29 at 14:00 UTC. Please check carefully the summer/winter time change in your country.

Join Zoom Meeting https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/92922491900?pwd=TU9uWlpSSHJxSjlnUitxcjdDWkR3UT09 Meeting ID: 929 2249 1900 Passcode: 781666

You can follow the seminar online or offline on our Youtube channel as well: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUoCNnaAfw5NAntItILFn4A

The abstract follows. The onset of the pandemic and the conflict in Europe have disrupted our society, supply chains, and economies. The effects of these global shocks are evident in every type of project - whether related to the energy transition, the renewal of transport infrastructure, or the construction industry- impacted by the highest rates of inflation in more than 30 years and by a significant cash flow crisis. In this complex landscape, delays in payments have become a common risk factor for projects, since they create a time lag between the expenses incurred by the contractor and the progress payments received from the client. The challenges associated with obtaining continuous project finances often place undue financial strain on contractors that may seek loans from financial institutions to maintain their daily operations. These loans must be returned with interest, increasing financing costs, and considerably lowering the Net Present Value. In this talk, we delve into cash flow and project scheduling strategies to mitigate late payment impacts and enhancing project resilience, presenting a distributionally robust risk-averse model that minimizes the financing cost by accurately estimating the amount and timing of the expenses and revenues throughout the project life cycle and foreseeing possible cost overruns and cash flow fluctuations. Joint work with Oncu Hazir.

The next talk in our series will be: Céline Swennenhuis (ALGO, TU Eindhoven) | December 13 | A Subexponential Time Algorithm for Makespan Scheduling of Unit Jobs with Precedence Constraints.

For more details, please visit https://schedulingseminar.com/

With kind regards

Zdenek, Mike and Guohua