Construction Project Management (Project planning using Critical Path Method and Budget Control)
Normally when talking about construction project management, it refers to project time management and managing schedule of each activity in the construction process starting from design to commissioning.
Software for project management: Primavera P6 Project and Portfolio Management, Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management, Microsoft Project, Deltek Open Plan etc.
What do we do in time management?
There are tons of activities in the construction process and each activities have relationship between one another. In other words, relationship or logic define order of activities. The logic types are Start to Finish (SF), Finish to Start (FS), Start to Start (SS) and Finish to Finish (FF). If activity A is a predecessor of Activity B with FS logic tied, it means Activity B cannot start until activity A finishes.
Each activity has planned start, planned finish, early start and early finish date. These dates help determine duration of the activity and most importantly determine Total Float and the Critical Path of the project. Why do we need to find critical path and what is Critical Path? In easy word, Critical Path is the longest path that is required for finishing the project. We use the longest path as critical path because it ensures that the other activities will be all finished by the time the longest path finish.
Furthermore, let’s talk about cost. Each activity is done by resources-always determined by three categories Man power, Machine and Material (3M). Those resources have cost, which allows project manager to estimate budget. Their value may be counted in $/day or $/hour.
Along with the labor cost, there are working calendars that determines how many days a week, hour per day, hours a week and hours a year they work on the activity. Then multiplying their total working hour with the cost, we’ll have planned value that is required to finish an activity. The planned value of all activities helps us estimate how much money needed for the whole project but it may change in actual work because there are always variety of obstacles that delay the activity. Since activates are tied with logic to each other, if one of them get delayed, the other activities will change their start date and finish date. The obstacles can be product manufacture issue, broken and damage while transporting, god’s will such as natural disaster, heat wave, rains, cold wave and pandemic, and also project financial shortage.
During the process, we can inspect if the project is running according to our planed budget by comparing the Planned Value with Earned Value. Using budget at completion multiply by schedule % complete, we’ll find Planned value by a data date. Using budget at completion multiply by performance % complete, we’ll find Earned Value by this data date. Lastly, using EV and PV to find Schedule Variance (SV=EV-PV). If the schedule variance is negative, it means our project is running late. If it is positive, the project is running ahead of schedule.
