Building Project: A Case Study in Project Planning and Control - Essay Example

? Building Project: A Case Study in Project Planning and Control Executive Summary Planning and control are two essential management functions that one must be able to master and should appropriately use in task management. Planning has important components or dimensions and one of them is to ensure the achievement of goals and objectives as significant measures of how a specific strategy is succeeding (Carpenter et al., 2009). The creation of Gantt chart or network diagrams for instance is a relevant indication of interconnecting both strategy and goals. Crashing for instance is a relevant strategy that would help the achievement of goals, which most of the time are tantamount to project completion or its on-time delivery. However, it is not only planning that plays crucial role in building or creation of a project. Control is necessary in order be able to monitor how well everything is going and also to apply corrective measures if necessary (Carpenter et al., 2009). Crashing activity for instance could remarkably illustrate this concept. This activity is a form of control because it sees to it that project be delivered on-time while taking into account the associated cost with significant delays. In this paper, the proponent tries to answer four essential parts of the case which primarily include creation of network diagrams, resource histogram, Gantt chart and illustration of crashing activity. All of these are important components of project planning and control. Introduction This case describes the planned activities for building project utilizing 5 sets of skilled human resources and also consists of four parts with the following questions and given data. PART A Produce a network diagram showing the precedence’s of the activities and indicate on the chart:- The earliest start and finish times of all activities The “Critical” activities if the project is completed in the shortest possible time The number of working days required to complete the project PART B Using MS Excel (or another spreadsheet of your choice), produce a “Gantt Chart” showing elapsed time assuming that the project is conducted on a six day week basis (i.e. No Sunday working). The Building must be completed by the end of Saturday 1st December 2012 PART C Using the same timescale as above, produce resource histograms for each of the 5 human resources listed in the planning information PART D Using the information below, demonstrate how you would “crash” the project to enable it to be conducted three days earlier than the time estimated above. Activity 1 can be reduced by a maximum of 2 days at a cost of ?700 per day Activity 2 can be reduced by a maximum of 4 days at a cost of ?150 per day Activity 4 can be reduced by a maximum of 3 days at a cost of ?100 per day Activity 5 can be reduced by a maximum of 3 days at a cost of ?300 per day Activity 6 can be reduced by a maximum of 3 days at a cost of ?200 per day Activity 7 can be reduced by a maximum of 2 days at a cost of ?500 per day Activity 8 can be reduced by a maximum of 1 day at a cost of ?300 per day Activity 10 can be reduced by a maximum of 1 day at a cost of ?200 per day Task Pred Duration (Days) Plumb B/Lay Paint Elect Tile 1 21 2 14 3 1 2 4 3 10 5 3 12 2 6 3 5 2 2 7 4, 5, 6 12 2 8 1 2 2 9 2 2 10 7, 8, 9 4 2 11 10 1 2 12 11 1 8 13 12 1 8 14 13 1 8 15 14 0 Key Pred - Immediate Predecessor Task Number Plumb Plumber B/Lay Brick layer Paint Painter Elect Electrician Tile Tiler In Part A, through the creation of network diagram for the project, the proponent generated the following information. The earliest start and finish times of all activities The “Critical” activities if the project is completed in the shortest possible time The number of working days required to complete the project These are important data that need to be gathered in order to find out the relevant information associated with project scheduling. Network diagram in this case serves as an important tool that tries to systematically illustrate the delivery of the project. It is a tool that tries to help the decision maker to keep track of how the project is progressing. In particular, if one would know the earliest start and finish times of all activities, the information about slack time would be generated which will pave the way for finding the critical activities. These activities should not be delayed because they exactly fit the number of working days required to complete the project. Delaying these activities will become the core reason of project delays. That is why it is important to know critical activities because as a form of control, crashing activity might be implemented upon knowing them. This is to assure that the entire project will be delivered or finished on time. Crashing activity is a form of control. It does not only ensure on-time delivery, but it also monitors associated cost. At this point, crashing activity might be a form of sacrificing certain cost, just to be able to deliver or finish project on time. Crashing activity however, tries to find out minimum cost of finishing activities at certain time prior to its expected delivery. This cost, as a form of control should always guarantee not to incur loss of opportunity cost from not delivering or finishing a project on time. The proponent also created Gantt chart aside from network diagram of activities with precedence. The Gantt chart is another tool that could help project coordinator or manager visualize the interconnection or flow of tasks or activities for the entire project. With Gantt chart, one would be able to depict the presence of overlapping tasks that would require significant attention particularly on the allocation of human resource. In this case, the proponent also prepared a human resource histogram showing in which part of the project there would be a maximum need for human resource in order not to delay the critical activities or accomplishment of the project on time. In totality, all relevant ideas, information, data, diagrams and tables stated in this paper that are associated with building a project are important components of project planning and control. Planning and control are two essential management functions that one must be able to master and should appropriately use in task management. Planning has important components or dimensions and one of them is to ensure the achievement of goals and objectives as significant measures of how a specific strategy is succeeding (Carpenter et al., 2009). The creation of Gantt chart or network diagrams for instance is a relevant indication of interconnecting both strategy and goals. Crashing for instance is a relevant strategy that would help the achievement of goals, which most of the time are tantamount to project completion or delivery on-time. However, it is not only planning that plays crucial role in building or creation of a project. Control is necessary in order be able to monitor how well everything is going and also to apply corrective measures if necessary (Carpenter et al., 2009). Let us take the case of crashing activity. This is a form of control because it sees to it project delivery on-time while taking into account the associated cost with project delays. In order to further understand these concepts; below are activities in line with project implementation applied in the context of building project and project planning and control. This case is composed of four parts. Part A Diagram 1: Network diagram showing the precedence of the activities. Based on the above chart, the critical path is therefore 3-5-7-10-11-12-13-14-15. This path consists of activities that could not be delayed. The critical path was obtained by computing the slack time which is the difference between the latest start time and earliest start time for every activity. There are 33 working days needed in order to complete the project which the critical path represents. To obtain the critical path, the proponent calculated first the earliest start time and earliest finish time of each task. Then after that, the calculation of latest start and latest finish times of each tasks follows. Detection of critical path was made easy through calculating the slack time. The critical activities have slack time equal to zero which were generated by computing the difference between the earliest finish time and latest finish time for each task. The critical activity at this point has at least 33 days for completion. No substantial delay should be involved in it. Part B Diagram 2: The Gantt chart showing the activities associated with project completion. The information stated in diagram 2 was generated using the appropriate table 1 below. After finding that there are exactly 33 days to complete the project, and given the idea that it has to be accomplished in December 1, the proponent referred to the calendar in 2012, counting the relevant days associated with the project while disregarding Sundays. Microsoft excel was used in order to generate the above Gantt Chart. The project should approximately start on October 24, and must exactly end on December 1. The summary of schedule of each task associated with the building project is clearly illustrated in diagram 2. Table 1: Tasks schedule and duration. Tasks Start Date Duration (days) End Date Task 1 26-Oct 21 20-Nov Task 2 3-Nov 14 20-Nov Task 3 24-Oct 1 25-Oct Task 4 27-Oct 10 8-Nov Task 5 25-Oct 12 8-Nov Task 6 2-Nov 5 8-Nov Task 7 8-Nov 12 22-Nov Task 8 20-Nov 2 22-Nov Task 9 20-Nov 2 22-Nov Task 10 22-Nov 4 27-Nov Task 11 27-Nov 1 28-Nov Task 12 28-Nov 1 29-Nov Task 13 29-Nov 1 30-Nov Task 14 30-Nov 1 1-Dec Task 15 1-Dec 0 1-Dec Part C Based on the above timescale as stated in Table 1, the proponent was able to produce resource histograms for each of the 5 human resources listed in the planning information, as shown in Diagram 3. This was generated using program in excel, the above time scale in Table 1 and the given data in the case. Diagram 3: Resource histograms for each of the 5 human resources based on the specific time scale shown in Table 1. Diagram 4: Resource histograms for each of the 5 human resources based on monthly allocation of human resource as shown in Table 1. Diagram four is a particular illustration in order to monitor the specific time or part of the project in which monthly allocation of human resource was mostly needed. Based on Diagram 3 and 4, the allocation of five types of human resource was remarkable and relevant during the time when the project would about to reach its expected deadline. Using the Microsoft excel, the above histograms are generated by using the information in the following tables. All data and information in the tables below are based on the timescale presented in Table 1. Table 2: Raw data for human resource histogram.   October November December Resource 24 25 26 27 2 3 8 20 22 24 25 27 28 29 30 1 Plumber 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Brick Layer 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Painter 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Electrician 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 Tiler 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 8 8 0 Table 3: Raw data for human resource histogram to show monthly allocation of human resource. Resource October November December Plumber 2 0 0 Brick Layer 2 2 0 Painter 0 4 0 Electrician 0 4 0 Tiler 0 24 0 Part D The time estimated above to conduct the project is within 33 days. This is the maximum time needed finish the project and no delay should possibly take place. The longest path or critical path that should not be delayed in order to reach the estimated time is 3-5-7-10-11-12-13-14-15. It would therefore make sense to crash any of these activities in order to at least finish the project three days earlier. Therefore, it should be activities 5, 7, and 10 that are best candidates for first crashing. Cost-wise, it would be cheaper to crash activity 10 first because the associated cost of crashing with it is ?200 per day, which is less than the costs of crashing activities 5 and 7. Activities 5 and 7’s costs of crashing are ?300 and ?500 per day, respectively. Crashing activity 10 will therefore produce the following cost. Activity Duration (day) Per day Cost Total 10 1 ?200 ?200 After crashing, the resulting critical path is shown in the new diagram below (Diagram 5). As shown, the latest time to finish the project is already 32 days. However, the same critical path exists, considering that the least slack time still exists in the following tasks or activities, 3-5-7-10-11-12-13-14-15. Therefore, the same critical path was obtained after the first crashing. Since the goal is to finish the project at least 3 days earlier than the expected time, another activity has to be crashed among those belonging to the critical path. However, since task 10 has already been crashed, the remaining tasks that would qualify for crashing are 5 and 7. Cost-wise, it would be impractical to crash 7 since the cost of crashing per day would be ?500 per day. We will go therefore for task 5 which has ?300 cost of crashing per day. The prevailing cost associated with crashing is therefore shown in the table below. Activity Duration (day) Per day Cost Total 10 1 ?200 ?200 5 2 ?300 ?800 Diagram 5: Network diagram showing the precedence of the activities after first crashing. Diagram 6: Network diagram showing the precedence of the activities after second crashing. After crashing task 5, there were three critical paths obtained. These include: 3-4-7-10-11-12-13-14-15; 3-5-7-10-11-12-13-14-15; and 1-8-10-11-12-13-14-15 (Diagram 6). All of these critical paths have to be finished within 30 days. All these paths of critical activities met the criteria of finishing the activity at least 3 days earlier from the schedule presented in the original network diagram 1. Below is the summary of the crashing activity and its associated cost. Project Duration (days) Crashed Activity Total Crash Cost New Critical Activities 33 None 0 3-5-7-10-11-12-13-14-15 32 10-1 ?200 3-5-7-10-11-12-13-14-15 30 5-2 ?800 3-5-7-10-11-12-13-14-15; 3-4-7-10-11-12-13-14-15; 1-8-10-11-12-13-14-15 Reference Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2009). Principles of Management. Irvington, NY: Flat World Knowledge. Read More