Dr.

Farah Abbas Naser

BASRAH ENGINEERING
TECHNICAL COLLEGE
 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Activities versus Events

Duration versus Event

Constraints: A number of different constraints must be acknowledged by the project

team. The common constraints are:

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 Physical Constraints
 Resource Constraints
 Productivity Constraints
 Safety Constraints
 Financial Constraints
 Environmental Constraints
 Management Constraints
 Contractual Constraints
 Regulatory Constraints

Impact of Constraints: Introduction of excessive constraints in network logic can

have the following impacts on a project:

 Reduce scheduling flexibility

 Lengthen project duration
 Generally, increase project cost
 Confuse basic scheduling logic

Network Modeling Technique—CPM

 CPM is the most popular network modeling technique

 In CPM technique, each activity is assigned a specific duration and
calculations through the network provide a single, specific duration for
the project as a whole
 CPM identifies those chains of activities (the critical paths) in the project
that control how long the project will take

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 There are two popular variations of CPM

 Activity-on-Arrow (A-on-A), or an arrow diagram
 This name is given to this traditional technique
because activities are represented in the network as
arrows or lines
 Activity-on-Node or Precedence technique
 This method defines the activities as boxes (nodes in
the network), which are connected together by lines
(links).
 This technique has got popularity because of the
availability of microcomputer software, which makes
it very easy to use.
Steps in Building a Network Model
 Define activities
 Order activities
 Establish activity relationships; draw a network diagram
 Determine quantities; assign durations to activities
 Assign resources and costs
 Calculate early and late start/finish times
 Compute float values and identify the critical path
 Schedule activity start/finish times
Defining Activities
 Production/Construction Activities
 These are activities that relate directly to the physical effort of
creating the project

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 These activities use traditional resources of labor and materials

 Procurement Activities
 These activities include arranging for the acquisition of
materials, money, equipment, and workforce
 Management Activities
 Activities such as preparing inspection reports, processing shop
drawing approvals, tracking submittal approvals, developing
as-built drawings, providing certifications on factory tests
performed, and a variety of similar tasks.
Ordering Activities
 For each identified activity, the following must be determined:
 Which activities must precede it?
 Which activities must follow it?
 Which activities can be concurrent with it?
 Assigning Durations to Activities. The duration of an activity is the
estimated time that will be required to complete it
 Duration of the activity can be computed as:
Qunatity of work
= crew − hours = Duration (days)
 (qty/crew hour )  Number of crews

 An alternative is to use historical Quantitative data from actual projects the

firm has previously undertaken.

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Early Start, Early Finish and

Late Finish and Late Start Times
➢ The "Early Start" (ES) or "Earliest Start" of an activity is the earliest time that
the activity can possibly start allowing for the time required to complete the
preceding activities.
➢ The "Early Finish" (EF) or "Earliest Finish" of an activity is the earliest possible
time that it can be completed and is determined by adding that activity's duration
to its early start time.
➢ The “Late Finish" (LF) or "Latest Finish" of an activity is the very latest that it
can finish and allow the entire project to be completed by a designated time or
date.
➢ The “Late Start” (LS) or "Latest Start" of an activity is the latest possible time
that it can be started if the project target completion date is to be met and is
obtained by subtracting the activity's duration from its latest finish time.
Calculation of Early and Late times

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Float Times —Free and Total Floats

 Float (or leeway) is a measure of the time available for a given activity
above and beyond its estimated duration.
 The free float of an activity is found by subtracting its earliest finish time
from the earliest start time of the activities directly following:
 FFi = Min. (ESj) - EFi

 The Total float of an activity is obtained by subtracting its ES time from

its LS time. Subtracting the EF from the LF gives the same result.
 Total float (TF) = LS - ES = LF - EF
 An activity with zero total float has no spare time and is, therefore, one
of the operations that controls project completion time.
 Activities with zero total float are called critical activities.
Free and Total Floats

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Activity Box

The format for activity box is not standardized, so one need only to adopt a format
that is comfortable for a particular application.
Critical Activity and Critical Path
 Critical activity is quickly identified as one whose two start times at the left of
the activity box are equal. Also equal are the two finish times at the right of the
activity box.
 The critical activities must form a continuous path from project beginning to
project end, this chain of critical activities is called the Critical Path.
 The critical path is the longest path in the network.
 The critical path is normally indicated on the diagram in some distinctive way
such as with colors, heavy lines, or double lines.
 Any delay in the finish date of a critical activity, for whatever reason,
automatically prolongs project completion by the same amount.
Subcritical paths
 Subcritical paths have varying degree of path float and hence
depart from criticality by varying amounts
 Subcritical paths can be found in the following way:

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

 Sort the activities in the network by their path float,

placing those activities with a common path float in the
same group
 Order the activities within a group by early start time
 Order the groups according to the magnitude of their
path float, small values first
Activity-on-Node (AON) Network
 The most common type of network schedule in use today is the Activity-
on-Node
 Activities are represented by nodes, drawn in any desired shape
 Lines represent “Activity links,” used to represent dependencies between
activities
 The principal advantage of the activity on node network is that it
eliminates the need for dummies.

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Developing AON Network

 The general developing of a network is from start to finish, from project
beginning on the left to project completion on the right.
 A horizontal diagram format is the standard format
 The sequential relationship of one activity to another is shown by the
dependency lines between them.
 The length of the lines between activities has no significance.
 Arrowheads are not always shown on the dependency lines because of the
obvious left to right flow of time.
 Dependency lines that go backward from one activity to another
(looping) should not be used.
 Crossovers occur when one dependency line must cross over another
to satisfy job logic.
Note
 Each activity in the network must be preceded either by the start of the
project or by the completion of a previous activity.
 Each path through the network must be continuous with no gaps,
discontinuities, or dangling activities.
 All activities must have at least one activity following, except the activity
that terminates the project.
 Each activity should have a unique numerical designation (activity code).
 Activity code is shown in the central part of the activity box, with the
numbering proceeding generally from project start to finish.

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Example 1: The activity list shown below represents the activities, the job logic and
the activities’ durations of a small project. Draw an activity on node network to
represent the project.

Solution

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Example 2:

The activity list shown below represents the activities, the job logic and the
activities’ durations of a small project. Draw an activity on node network to represent
the project.

Activity Depends on Duration (days)

A D 4
B R 5
C D 8
E R, S 7
F B, C 3
D None 4
S A, C 2
R A, C 9

Solution
Step-1: Draw Activity diagram

When you have to draw an activity diagram. Pick the first activity and then see on
which it depends and then see on which these (i.e., predecessors) depend. For
example, to draw activity A, see activity D then see on which activity D depends and
so on.

ES t EF
Activity
LS TF LF

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Step-2: Calculate ES and EF and Project duration

EF = ES + D

In forward pass you may encounter merge activities (e.g., S and R are merging to E)
whereas in backward pass you can encounter burst activities (e.g., A and C are
bursting from D)

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Step-3: Calculate LS and LF

LS = LF - D

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 FOURTH STAGE – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT / LECTURE 5

Step-4: Calculate Total Float

Total float (TF) = LS - ES = LF - EF

Step-5: Identify Critical Path

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