CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT-IX

TOPIC: REPETITIVE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

SUBMITTED BY:
MOHIT- 6025
GAURAV-6016
VIKAS- 6041
PARVEEN- 6029
INTRODUCTION TO CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

The ultimate goal of managing construction projects is completing the project with the least
amount of time and at the lowest possible cost. To achieve this objective, establishing an
attainable and practical schedule in terms of time, cost, and resource utilization for the project
is essential.
The Critical Path Method (CPM), a scheduling method, has been used widely in construction
because I) it offers great simplicity and 2) most scheduling software offers CPM capabilities
With an inexpensive price and ease of use.

However, industry and academic have realized the fallacies of the method over the past decades.
While most profit-driven projects are influenced by the quality of time management, cost
management, and resource management, CPM primarily focuses on time. Many experience-based
techniques & methods have been integrated within CPM to supplement the missing dimensions.
Yet, their capabilities are still limited by the underlying of CPM. Especially in managing and
maximizing resource utilization, CPM performs poorly since it is a pure time-based scheduling
approach, not a resource-based approach.

Though several resource-based scheduling techniques have been proposed over the years, many
diverse topics of repetitive project scheduling need to be examined such as probabilistic
scheduling, the trade off between continuous resource utilization and project duration, and resource
allocation.
REPETITIVE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS
Examples of repetitive projects are high-rise buildings, housing projects, tunnels, and highways.
High-rise buildings are made up of floors; housing projects are made up of housing units;
tunnel projects are made up of tunnel rings; highways are made up of road sections.

These projects require resources performing the same or similar activities repetitively from floor to
floor, from house to house, from tunnel ring to ring, or from section to section. For example, the
same crew installs drywall from floor to floor in a multi-storey building. Floors, houses, tunnel rings,
and sections are referred to as units in such projects.

By definition, repetitive projects are projects that consist of a series of repetitive activities
requiring resources working and moving from one unit to another. These units are usually
identical or similar depending on the design.

One of the main interests in scheduling repetitive projects is the ability to keep resources working
continuously without idle time. Idle time is the period that a resource is being paid but not
performing any work. Since resources are paid from the date they start working to the date they
finish the work, idle time during employment is considered unproductive.

Accordingly, activities should be scheduled in such a way that idle time of resources is eliminated or
minimized. To do so, resource constraints must be incorporated into the schedule.
RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS

There are two types of resource constraints:

- resource availability constraints and
- resource continuity constraints.

Availability constraints indicate the limited number of resources available to activities

during a particular period; therefore, they control the output of those activities.
Continuity constraints stipulate that resources, such as crews, need to work
continuously and without interruption from the time they first arrive to the job site until
they leave.

CPM generally assumes that there are unlimited resources and unconditional
utilization Of resources. Instead of applying resource constraints on the schedule, only
precedence constraints are accounted for in scheduling resources. As a result, the derived
schedule from CPM is often impractical and inefficient.

Resource availability constraints and resource continuity constraints should not be

omitted nor represented by precedence constraints, and, of course, they are not inferior
to precedence constraints. Thus, it is necessary to impose availability and continuity
constraints onto the schedule.
LINEAR PROJECTS
Linear projects are projects involving repetitive activities. They take their name from either:
(a) involving several uniform units of work such as multiple houses or typical floors in a
building;

(b) being geometrically linear such as highway, pipeline, and utility projects. In both categories,
however, some non-typical units could be involved such as a non-typical floor in a high-rise building
or a non-standard station in a highway project.

The activities in these non-typical units may certainly involve higher or lower quantity of work
than their counterparts in the typical units. To simplify the scheduling task in these situations, we
can assume that the project is comprised of (n) typical units, with the activities in each unit having
average quantity of the work in all units. As the number of units in a project increases, eventually
the project becomes more complex and more challenging.

Resource-Driven Scheduling

As we have seen in network scheduling, the basic inputs to critical-path analysis are the individual
project activities, their durations, and their dependency relationships.
Accordingly, the forward-path and backward-path calculations determine the start and finish
times of the activities. The CPM algorithm, therefore, is duration-driven. Activities durations here
are function of the resources that are required (rather than available) to complete each activity.
The CPM formulation, therefore, assumes that resources are in abundance and cannot be used to
determine what resources are needed in order to meet known project deadline duration.
SUMMARY DIAGRAMS
Summary Diagrams Using Two Relationships

One of the methods used for preparing schedules for linear and repetitive projects is the summary
diagrams. The diagram can be constructed as follows:

1. The repetitive units of one work type are represented by one activity. The duration of this
activity is the summation of the durations for individual units within the same activity.

2. In order to maintain the logic of the network of such a project, relationships between the start of
each activity and the start of its successor and between the finish of each activity and the finish
of its successor are introduced as follows:

Start to start relationship (Lag SS) = duration of one unit of predecessor

Finish to finish relationship (Lag FF) = duration of one unit of successor

3. The early and late start timings of each activity represent timings of the first individual unit
of this activity. On the other hand, the early and late finish timings of each activity represent timings
of the last individual unit of this activity.

Therefore, contract completion time equals finish time of the last activity in the summary diagram.
LINE OF BALANCE
Line of Balance (LOB) is a management control process for collecting, measuring and
presenting facts relating to time cost and accomplishment - all measured against a specific plan.
It shows the process, status, background, timing and phasing of the project activities, thus providing
management with measuring tools that help:

- Comparing actual progress with a formal objective plan.

- Examining only the deviations from established plans, and gauging their degree of severity with
respect to the remainder of the project.
- Receiving timely information concerning trouble areas and indicating areas where appropriate
corrective action is required.
- Forecasting future performance.

The LOB itself is a graphic device that enables a manager to see at a single glance which
activities of an operation are "in balance" - i.e., whether those which should have been completed
at the time of the review actually are completed and whether any activities scheduled for future
completion are lagging behind schedule.

The LOB chart comprises only one feature of the whole philosophy which includes numerous danger
signal controls for all the various levels of management concerned.
BACKGROUND & HISTORY OF CPM

Developed in the 1950s by the US Navy

Originally, the critical path method considered only logical dependencies between

terminal elements

Since then, it has been expanded to allow for the inclusion of resources related to each

activity, through processes called activity-based resource assignments and resource

leveling.

Critical Path Method for the construction industry

Non-computer approach
CRITICAL PATH METHOD

The critical path method (CPM) is a step-by-step technique for process planning that
defines critical and non-critical tasks with the goal of preventing time-frame problems
and process bottlenecks.
The CPM is ideally suited to projects consisting of numerous activities that interact in a
complex manner.

In applying the CPM, there are several steps that can be summarized as follows:

Define the required tasks and put them down in an ordered (sequenced) list.

Create a flowchart or other diagram showing each task in relation to the others.

Identify the critical and non-critical relationships (paths) among tasks.

Determine the expected completion or execution time for each task.

Locate or devise alternatives (backups) for the most critical paths.

WHAT IS CRITICAL PATH METHOD CPM ?

The Critical Path Method or Critical Path Analysis, is a mathematically based

algorithm for scheduling a set of project activities.

It is an important tool for effective project management.

Commonly used with all forms of projects, including construction, software

development, research projects, product development, engineering, and plant
maintenance, among others.

Any project with interdependent activities can apply this method of scheduling
DEFINITIONS

Float (slack) - amount of time that a task can be delayed without causing a delay to
subsequent tasks (free float), project completion date (total float)
Critical path is the sequence of activities which add up to the longest overall duration.
It is the shortest time possible to complete the project. Any delay of an activity on the
critical path directly impacts the planned project completion date (there is no float on
the critical path).
A project can have several, parallel, near critical paths. An additional parallel path
through the network with the total durations shorter than the critical path is called a
sub-critical or non-critical path.
Critical activity activity with zero float