CHAPTER 3

NETWORK SCHEDULING
TECHNIQUES
 OUTLINES

• Pert and CPM methods

• Keywords
• Building the networks: AON and AOA
• Slack identification
• Applications
• Positive/ Negative slack or float
• Replanning techniques
• Crashing costs
• Other project graphics
• Project with uncertain activities durations
 SCHEDULING TECHNIQUES

• Networks
–Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
–Arrow Diagram Method (ADM) [Sometimes called the Critical
Path Method (CPM)]
–Graphical Evaluation and Review Technique (GERT)
–Precedence Diagram Method (PDM)
PERT AND CPM TECHNIQUES
NETWORKS LANGUAGE
PERT AND CPM LANGUAGE

Activity

Critical
Event
path

Keywords

Path Milestone

Network
 BUILDING PROJECT NETWORKS

A network used to represent a project is called a project network.

A project network consists of a number of nodes (typically shown as small
circles or rectangles) and a number of arcs (shown as arrows) that lead from
some node to another.
Three types of information are needed to describe a project:
1. Activity information: Break down the project into its individual activities (at
the desired level of detail).
2. Precedence relationships: Identify the immediate predecessor(s) for each
activity.
3. Time information: Estimate the duration of each activity.
Activity ( or task) Duration Immediate
predecessor
 BUILDING PROJECT NETWORKS

Two alternative types of project networks :

-The activity-on-arc (AOA) : PERT project network: each activity is represented by an

arc. A node is used to separate an activity (an outgoing arc) from each of its immediate
predecessors (an incoming arc). The sequencing of the arcs thereby shows the precedence
relationships between the activities.

-The activity-on-node (AON)/ CPM project network: each activity is represented by a

node. The arcs then are used just to show the precedence relationships between the
activities. In particular, the node for each activity with immediate predecessors has an arc
coming in from each of these predecessors.
 BUILDING PROJECT NETWORKS

Activity-on-arc (AOA) Activity-on-node (AON)

(PERT nomenclature) (CPM presentation)

A, tA A, tA B, tB

C
A A
1 tA 2
tA
Start of A End of A
tA
A
A, tA B, tB

C
 BUILDING PROJECT NETWORKS

Special case in PERT diagram: DUMMY ACTIVITIES

A PRECEDING
ACTIVITY ACTIVITY
DUMMY A -
B -
C B
B D A,B
C
DEPENDENCIES
 APPLICATION
NETWORK
BUILDING

1) Draw PERT and CPM diagrams for this project

2) Identify the critical path and calcuate the estimated project duration
 NETWORK BUILDING:
PERT CHART (EXAMPLE)
 CPM DIAGRAM

E,2

B,5
D,2
A,1 K,2 End
H,2 I,3 J,3

F,2
Start of C,2 Estimated
the project
project G,3 duration
 CRITICAL PATH

• The critical path is vital for successful control of the project because
it tells management two things:
● Because there is no slack time in any of the events on this path, any
slippage will cause a corresponding slippage in the end date of the program
unless this slippage can be recovered during any of the downstream events (on
the critical path).
● Because the events on this path are the most critical for the success
of the project, management must take a hard look at these events in order to
improve the total program.
 SLACK IDENTIFICATION

• ES : Earliest StartDate of an activity is the earliest time (date) on which an

event can be expected to take place (Date de début au plutôt) Forward
• EF: Earliest Finish Date(Date de fin au plutôt) of an activity. An activity PASS
started at its ES and takes an estimated time or duration t.
EF = ES + t
• LS: Latest Start Date ( Date de début au plutard) of an activity is the latest
date on which an event can take place without extending the completion date of the project Backward
• LF : Latest Finish Date ( Date de fin au plutard) PASS
LS = LF- t.
• Slack time or float :
Slack= LS- ES = LF- EF
The calculation for slack time is performed for each event in the network
 SLACK IDENTIFICATION -
ILLUSTRATION

FORWARD PASS

3 4
Backward pass

1 Calculated End
Customer’s start date date
 APPLICATION SLACK IDENTIFICATION

Forward pass Backward pass

Activity Earliest start (ES) Latest start (LS) Slack = ES-
1-2 (A) 0 0 MIN (LF(2-3)-t 2-3 ,,LF(2)-t 2-4 )= 1 LS
2-3 (B) 1 1 MIN (LF(3-7)-t 3-7 ,,LF(3-5)-t 3-5 )= 1 0
2-4 (C) 1 4 MIN (LF(4-8)-t 4-8 ,,LF(4-5)-t 4-5 )= 6 0
3-5 (D) 6 6 3
0
4-5 (F) 3 6
3
5-6 (H) 8 (ES(3-5)+t
Max 8
3-5 , ES(4-5)+t 4-5 )= 8
0
6-7 (I) 10 10
0
3-7 (E) 6 11
5
7-8 (J) 13Max (ES(3-7)+t 3-7 , ES(6-7)+t 6-7 )= 13 13
0
4-8 (G) 3 13
10
8-9 (K) 15 (ES(4-8)+t 4-8 , ES(7-6)+t 7-8 )= 16
Max 16 = LF( 8-9) - t8-9
0
The (estmated) project duration= EF( 8-9)= 16+2 =18 =LF(8-9)
SLACK IDENTIFIC ATION – INFORMATION
PRESENTATION ON PERT DIAGRAM
 TYPES OF SLACK

Positive Slack Negative Slack

 NEGATIVE SLACK

FORWARD PASS

3 4
Backward pass

1 2
Customer’s start date Customer’s End date
 CAUSES OF NEGATIVE SLACK

• The original plan was highly optimistic, but unrealistic

• The customer’s end date was unrealistic
• One or more activities slipped during project execution
• The assigned resources did not possess the correct skill levels
• The required resources would not be available until a later
date
ACTIVITY INFORMATION ON THE
NETWORK
WHAT WE WILL PRESENT FOR TIME
SCHEDULING
EXAMPLE (CPM)
 SUMMARY, CRITICAL PATH

• The critical path is vital for successful control of the project because it
tells management two things:
● Because there is no slack time in any of the events on this path, any
slippage will cause a corresponding slippage in the end date of the program
unless this slippage can be recovered during any of the downstream events
(on the critical path).
● Because the events on this path are the most critical for the
success of the project, management must take a hard look at these events
in order to improve the total program.
REPLANNING TECHNIQUES
 NETWORK REPLANNING

• Network replanning is performed either at the conception of the

program in order to reduce the length of the critical path, or during
the program, should the unexpected occur
• There are three network replanning techniques:
• Schedule compression methods
• resource leveling
• and resource allocation.
 RESOURCE LEVELING

• Resource leveling is an attempt to eliminate the manpower

peaks and valleys by smoothing out the period-to-period
resource requirements. The ideal situation is to do this
without changing the end date. However, in reality, the end
date moves out and additional costs are incurred.
RESOURCE LEVELING
 RESOURCE ALLOCATION

• Resource allocation (or resource limited planning) is an attempt

to find the shortest possible critical path based upon the available
or fixed resources. The problem with this approach is that the
employees may not be qualified technically to perform work on
more than one activity in a network.
 SCHEDULE COMPRESSION

● Elimination of some parts of the ● Shortening longest activities

project ● Shortening easiest activities
● Addition of more resources (i.e., ● Shortening activities that are least
crashing) costly to speed up
● Substitution of less time-consuming ● Shortening activities for which you
components or activities have more resources
● Parallelization of activities ● Increasing the number of work
● Shortening critical path activities hours per day
● Shortening early activities
EXAMPLE: PARALLELIZATION OF
ACTIVITIES
 PROGRAM CRASHING COSTS

• The cost of speeding up / shortening

(crashing) certain activities or phases of a
project .
• These crashing costs are additional
expenses above the normal estimates
 PROGRAM CRASHING COSTS

Which Activities Should Be Crashed?

• Only those activities on the critical path are considered, starting with the
activities for which the crashing cost per unit time is the lowest.
• Crashing data for each activity
• Normal and new duration after crashing (crash duration)
• Normal cost and new cost after crashing ( crash cost)
• crashing cost per unit time

=> trade-off between time and cost can be obtained

 PROGRAM CRASHING COSTS
EXAMPLE

Step 1: determine the critical path

Path Length ( weeks)
P1: A-B-D-F 18
P2: A-B-E-F 23
P: 3 A-C-E-F 19
Program Crashing costs - Application Cu

• Data:

Critical path (CP):

A-B-E-F

Total cost of the project (normal) = 120 000 $

the crashing cost per time
unit
• Consider activities on Critical Path (CP)
• Start with activities on CP for which CU is the lowest.
What is the cost of the project after crashing activities?
 Activity Number of Cu Paths Crashing cost Total
to crash time units ( $ per P1: P2: P3: project cost
that activirt week) A-B-D- A-B-E- A-C-E-
can be F F F
crashed

Initially - 0 18 23 19 0 120 000

1 A 2 2000 16 21 17 2*2000=4000 120000+

2*2000 =
124000

2 F 3 3000 13 18 14 4000+ 3*3000 124000+900

= 13000 0=133000

3 E 2 6000 13 16 12 13000+2*6000 =133000+12

= 25000 000= 145000

4 B 1 12,500 12 15 12 25000+ 12,500 145000+12,5

= 00=
37,500 157,500
PROGRAM CRASHING COSTS

• The crashing cost is an

increase of $37,500
from $120,000 to
$157,500.
• The corresponding time
is reduced from 23 to
15 weeks.
 PROJECT GRAPHICS

Gantt or bar charts

Milestone charts
Cost and performance tracking
schedule
GANTT CHART
PRECEDENCE DIAGRAM
PRECEDENCE NETWORKS
EXAMPLE OF PRECEDENNCE
RELATIONSHIPS
TYPICAL PRECEDENCE RELATIONSHIPS
TYPICAL PRECEDENCE RELATIONSHIPS
TYPICAL PRECEDENCE RELATIONSHIPS
MILESTONE CHART
 COST AND
PERFORMANCE
TRACKING
SCHEDULE
DEALING WITH UNCERTAIN
DURATIONS
 DEALING WITH UNCERTAIN ACTIVITY
DURATIONS

The PERT Three-Estimate Approach:

• Most likely estimate (m): estimate of the most likely value of the duration,
• Optimistic estimate (o): estimate of the duration under the most favorable conditions,
• Pessimistic estimate (p): estimate of the duration under the most unfavorable conditions.
 DEALING WITH UNCERTAIN ACTIVITY
DURATIONS
• Approach

Initial Data:

1) Additional data to calculate:

For each activity

Mean is the expected activity duration
 DEALING WITH UNCERTAIN ACTIVITY
DURATIONS

2)Determine the probability distribution of the project duration

(Dcp)
Step 1: determine the mean critical path : the path through the project network that
would be the critical path if the duration of each activity equals its mean.
Step 2: Calculate the mean (denoted by μcp) of the probability distribution of project
duration
Step 3 . Calculate the variance (denoted by σ2cp ) of the probability distribution of project
duration?

𝝁𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒉 = ෍ 𝝁𝒊 𝝈𝟐𝑪𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒉 = ෍ 𝝈𝟐𝒊

𝒊 ;𝒊 𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒊,𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒕𝒚

𝐷𝑐𝑝 → 𝑁 𝜇𝑐𝑝 , 𝜎𝑐𝑝 ; 𝑐𝑝: 𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑎𝑡ℎ

 DEALING WITH UNCERTAIN ACTIVITY
DURATIONS

It is possible to calculate the probability of completing the

project in a given time t

𝑫𝒄𝒑 − 𝝁𝒄𝒑 𝒕 − 𝝁𝒄𝒑 𝒕 − 𝝁𝒄𝒑

𝑷 ( 𝑫𝒄𝒑 ≤ 𝒕) = 𝑷 ( ≤ )=𝑭( )
𝝈𝒄𝒑 𝝈𝒄𝒑 𝝈𝒄𝒑
𝒄𝒑: 𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒉

F is the distribution function F(z) for a variable z following a normal

distribution N(0,1)
The distribution function F(z) for a variable z following a normal distribution
N(0,1)