The making and reading of a network diagram requires familiarity of the network conventions. One of the main es of PERT and CPM is their use of a network or prece- diagram which is the key in solving typical problems. precedence diagram, clearly indicate which of the activi- S Must be performed in the sequence and which can be per- formed independently with each other. The network diagram is nposed of a number of Arrows and Nodes p there are two slightly different conventions for making a work diagram. They are: Activity on Arrow (AOA)- that is using arrows to desig- nate activities. Activity on Node (AON)- using nodes to designate ac- tivities. ©--@ oa lel Ch @ AOA AON The Nodes in the AOA approach represents the beginning nd the end of activities, which are called event. Events are fint in time. Unlike activities, they do not consume either re~ ees or time. Activities can be referred to in two Ways. ts such as activity 1-2 and the other . is by int | One is by their end poi ay ee a letter assigned to an arrow suc!PROJE network desoribes: vities on a project, Fo according to the neTHE NETWORK FUND) ' . } J 4 inciples in Networking or A E That everything in the network or arrow diag : havea meaning. Thus; __a) Every arrow represents an item of work and is called Activity. Excavation ——_—_—— FIGURE 52 b) An Event is the starting point of an Activity by a circle, square or any geometrical form. Excavation OO FIGURE 5-3 a) An Activity is dependent upon and cannot begin until af , ter the completion of all preceding Activities. Making forms 3 Order and deliver cement FIGURE 5-4 Pour footing slab d) All activities that start with the same event cannot begin until after the completion of all activities that enter that event. Making forms Pour footing slab Order and deliver cement, Pour pedestal FIGURE 5-5 Ex}rom the figure 5-7, block laying cannot be started until © pouring of concrete footing is finished. Similarly, po oting cannot be done unless the mpleted. In short, the inter-relati lock laying precedes pouring of footing; pouring of footing _ cedes forms assembling and forms assembling precedes digging. — forms and digging have b The network (arrow diagram) does not describe Jationships but rather dependency relationships. The length and direction of an activity arrow has no re ship with the amount of time required to accomplish th presented by it. Similarly, two activities starting with event do not necessarily occur at the same time. @— A a FIGURE 5-8 The arrow diagram defines the activity dependency situations that exist. Activities B and C does not mean that both activities must be conducted at the same timé. They might but probably will not. What is important to note here is that these two activi- ties are independent. PRINCIPLE N That the network (arrow diagram) is hardly ever done by 7 a single person. 3‘or this reason, one or more ties can either be: . By their end points such as I-2; 2-4: ete. 2. By letter assigned to an arrow such as: a, b, ¢, ef. Dummy Activity - Is an arrow on a network showing the dent relationsi1ip between two activities. However, dummy ity does not represent actual work efforts, and do not con- time. Dummy activity may be used in the network to dis- between two or more parallel activities. Duration of an Activity - Is the time it takes an activity to € finished. In short, this is the normal time duration of a task. tion activity is the span of time from the Early Start to its ly Finish or from its Late Start to its Late Finish. Path - A Path is a sequence of activities that leads from the ting node to the finishing node. Thus, the sequence 1-2-46 7(a) Path 1-2-4-6 (b) Path 1-3-5-6 Comment: 1. The length or time of any path can be determined by add- ing the expected time of the activities along that path. 2. The path with the longest time, catches management inter- est because it governs the project completion time. 3. In short, the expected duration of a project is equal to the expected time of the longest path. 4. If there are delays along the longest path, naturally there is also a corresponding delay in project completion time. 5. Therefore, any attempt to shorten the project completion time must concentrate on the longest sequence of activi- tes because of its relation to the completion time. 6. The longest path is the critical path and its activities are called the critical activities, 7. Paths that are shorter than the critical path may experience some delay but may not affect the over all Project comple- tion time as long as the ultimate path time does not exceed the length of the critical path. The allowable slippage for any path is called the path slack ox float time. It indicates the difference between the length of a given path and the length of the critical path. 9. The critical path then has a zero slack or float. 98: ILLUSTRATION S-1 In the following figure, activity A must be completed first be- fore activity B can be started. Likewise, activity B must be com- pleted first before starting activity C, A B c FIGURE 5-10 98pe Ee In the following diazram, both aetivity a and activity b 1 completed first before aotivity e can begin, But a and be worked on at the same time. Performance of a is dependent Performance of bh, A oe 6 FIGURE 6-12 ILLUSTRATION 5-4 When several activities enter a node, it means that all those ‘ivities must be completed first before any activities that will gin at that node can start, Thus, in the following diagram, ac- ity a and activity b must be finished first before either activ- cor activity d can start FIGURE 6-13 ooFIGURE 5-17 les for Numbering Events in a Network Diagram 1. Allevents should be numbered starting from left to right. 2, No event number should be lower than the number of ¥ event preceding it ( left to right direction ). "3, Event number shall increase from left to right. 101_ Use pencil in constructin: Activities without predes the network (left side) Activities with multiple predecessors are located at path _ intersections, Start with a single node andend with a single node . Avoid having paths that cross with each other. 6, Number nodes from left to right __ 7. Activities should go from left to right. 8. Use only one arrow between any pair of nodes. ig precedence diagram. cessors are placed at the start of _ Examining the table of informations above; Letters ay & are absent in the precedes column. Therefore, these are the activities without predecessors. : a precedes c,d e precedes f & precedes h The next question is to find the Critical Path. ‘ Examining the above network diagram we have the following oute or path. 39* j = 4+12+2+12+9 ee ha 4+5+12+9 = 30 | Ps 3+8+9 =20 | k= 1+3 +15 = 19 i e hi ber is 39, thus, above tabulation, the highest num| ees i,j is the Critical Path which means the longest Bee sary the duration of the project is 39 which could be in s of days, weeks or months. 103