Project Scheduling and Overloaded Resources

Discussion 1
“Project Scheduling” 

The project of my choice is the Roofing of a building,

1, Identify the work to be done

2, Schedule the activities to be done

3, Allocate resources

Based on the chart the work to be done is identified and divided as follows to complete the roofing work, hence we have 5 project to execute under roofing work.

1, TAKING LEVELS (WALL PLATES, KING POST POSTIONS).

2, ROOF CARCASS.

3, ROOFING SHEET INSTALLATION.

4, CEILIING NOGGINGS.

5, ELECRICAL PIPING.

The whole project would take 3 weeks to complete. The first three works will proceed one after the other (finish to start) ie Taking Levels(wall plates , king post positions) must be completed before the Roof Carcass is started, which in turn must be completed before roofing sheet installation is started.

Ceiling noggins come after roofing sheet installation but with a lag of 1 day, this implies that ceiling noggins does not have to wait till roof sheet installation is complete, but can start while the roof sheet installation is yet completed (1 day to completion) as some aspect of the roof installation should have been completed already(by then)(Ahamed, R. (2010)).

In the other hand Electrical piping must finish the same day as the ceiling noggins (Finish to Finish) and it’s to start two days to the end of ceiling noggins(Ahmed, A., B. Kayis, et al. (2007)).

Having identify the work to be done, the schedule of activities it would now be possible to allocate resources for each of the activities as follows

TAKING LEVELS (WALL PLATES, KING POST POSTIONS) -4 carpenters

ROOF CARCASS6 carpenters

ROOFING SHEET INSTALLATION 6 carpenters

CEILIING NOGGINGS4 carpenters

ELECRICAL PIPING2 Electricians

With all these in place budget and cost can now be allocated, once approved, the service charted signed off, work can now proceed.

Discussion 2
“Overloaded Resources”

Resource loading is the process of assigning resources (people, facilities, and equipment) to a project usually activity by activity.Resource forecast is now compared to the resources available. The ideal situation is when the resource requirements equal the resource available,A resource overload is when the resource forecast requirement exceeds the available resources whilst a resource under load will underutilize the company resource which could have a detrimental effect on the company profitability and productivity(Anderson, H., V. Havila, et al. (1998)).

Resource Smoothing

Resource smoothing is the process of moving activities to improve the resource loading profile.Options for resource smoothing are tabulated below:

Assign resources to critical activities first because if a critical Activity is delayed this will delay the whole project. Time-limited resource smoothing, If the end date of the project is fixed, the resources must be increased to address any overloads Resource-limited resource scheduling. If the maximum number of resources is fixed, the end date may need to be extended to address any overload Increase resources. To address an overload Reduce resources to address an under load (under-utilized) (Bragg, S. M. (2006)).

Resource Gantt Charts

Gantt charts list the activities (scope of work) in the left column against a time scale along the top of the page.

Resource Histograms

Resource histogram gives a good visual presentation which is easy to assimilate and understand

References