Question

Project Management Analytics Exercise

This is an example of a construction project. The construction for a large corporate building must be started by February 19^th and completed by the end of the year. The legal contract for the project includes a penalty of $10,000 for every week of delay beyond December 31^st. This implies 315 days or 45 weeks for the expected project duration assuming a seven-day work schedule and no holidays in between!

The details of the project activities are as follows –

The project begins with clearing the site, an activity that takes eight weeks. Once the site is cleared, laying of the subsurface drainage takes another eight weeks, followed by filling of the earth which takes 14 weeks. Only after this activity is completed can installation of the artificial turf outside of the building can start – the task then takes 12 weeks. Simultaneously, the work on the building can also start once the site is cleared.

The work on the building starts first by excavating and then by pouring of the concrete basement. Each of these activities takes 4 weeks to complete. Next comes the construction of the walls (12 weeks), followed by constructing the roof (13 weeks). The interiors are then completed (5 weeks) followed by internal painting (4 weeks). However, painting cannot be started until electrical work is completed (4 weeks). The electrical work cannot be started until the outside power lines are laid (8 weeks), which needs an additional activity of getting the permits before it can be started. The permit takes 4 weeks. Assume that you would start on the permits after the excavation activity for the building begins.

Once the roof of the building is erected, work can start simultaneously on the outside lighting (5 weeks), and on the signage and other external landscaping (4 weeks). For simplicity, assume you start the project on February 19^th and you follow a 7-day work schedule where each week of an activity’s duration takes 7 days.

Analyze the following questions based on the estimates of the above activities -

3) You have a few proposals to expedite the completion of the project. Analyze each proposal independently of the other proposals and comment on which proposal (if any) would you adopt for expediting the project?

a) Expedite the wall construction activity – this would cost $20000 and would reduce the activity by six weeks

b) The same as the above proposal but in addition, use a double shift on filling the earth. This would cost $10,000 and would reduce the filling activity by 5 weeks.

c) Construction of the roof is important. You could use additional labor for $9000 and cut six weeks off the original duration of the activity.

Answer 1

We first need to prepare the logical steps of the events along with their respective time.

Key points to be noted :

>work on the building can also start once the site is cleared.

>filling of the earth takes 14 weeks. Only after this activity is completed can installation of the artificial turf outside of the building can start

>Once the roof of the building is erected, work can start simultaneously on the outside lighting

>Assume that you would start on the permits after the excavation activity for the building begins.

We build an activity diagram and find out the critical path .

Sl No.	Activity	Time in Weeks
1	clearing the site	8
2	subsurface drainage	8
3	filling of the earth	14
4	installation of the artificial turf	12
5	excavating	4
6	pouring of the concrete basement	4
7	construction of the walls	12
8	constructing the roof	13
9	Interiors	5
10	painting	4
11	electrical work	4
12	outside power lines are laid	8
13	getting the permits	4
14	outside lighting	5
15	signage and other external landscaping	4

Below diagram shows arrangement of the steps involved as boxes and the number of weeks taken written beneath each box.

Bottleneck Path: 1-5-6-7-8-9-10

Calculate the time taken for the critical path: 8+4+4+12+13+5+4= 50 weeks.

We have 45 weeks time to complete. It would therefore seem that the project will be delayed by 5 weeks. The Penalty therefore would be 5*10,000$ = 50,000$

Analysing the proposals to expedite:

Reducing 5 weeks would mean that the project completes in 50 - 5 = 45 weeks. hence we would prefer to go with the proposal that costs us the least while reducing at least 5 weeks of time from any one of the critical activites.

a> Reduces 6 weeks from activity 7 , (Project completion time = 50-6=44 weeks) Costs 20,000. Implies that this Would save us any penalties at a cost of 20,000. Can be accepted.

b>Reduces 5 weeks from activity 3 ( which is not a part of critical path) hence has no effect on completion time. Must be rejected

c>Reduces 6 weeks from activity 8, (Project completion time = 50-6=44 weeks) . Costs 9,000$.  Implies that this Would save us any penalties at a cost of 9,000. Should be accepted. This is the best proposal amongst the three.