A friend asked me about how to determine the critical path of their project in relation to contractual key dates.
The case is, they have contract to construct the superstructure and finished for a train depot. It is located in a large area and it is divided into sub-area. Each sub-area has a particular structure to be built like administration building, power facilities building, fire service building, maintenance workshop, etc. Each sub-area will be handed over to them once the foundations were completed by other contractor and it will not be at once.
Aside from the usual contract key dates of start and finish for the whole project, each sub-zone has a completion key date in which there is a penalty if they don't finish it on that date. He told me that they try to do each sub-area independently and resources is not issue.
In this case, how many critical path this project will have?
It is a near certainty that the previous subcontractor will be late finishing their parts and they will hand them over to you later than anyone is currently anticipating, demanding or promising.
You should only be prepared to commit to a maximum duration from the handover (ie your start).
Since you don't know yet what your actual start date will be in advance, you should not yet commit to a contract finish date.
Hi Ronn
I understand that you are intending to create a project with several sub-projects. I suggest that you create in the EPS an new item in the corrrect OBS with the title: "Superstructures for a train depot".
Under this EPS you create four separate projects.
<<Administration building
<<Power facilities building
<<Fire service building
<<Maintenance workshop
Each of these projects should have their own start and finish Keydates. So, the critical path of all four the projects are separately shown in the individual projects. If you open all projects at the same time you can see them all al the same time.
For updating and progressing you can open each project separately or all projects at the same time. If you could recourse all the 4 projects then you can plan, level and manage the recourse requirments for each project and for all projects or any combinations you whish.
Regards
Johannes
I will try to see the results of Critical path based on the longest path and another based on 0 floats.
Compare to see whether there is a need to generate individual sectors of critical path.
In terms of phases, the commissioning of the train depot could be the important end point and you may see which sectors have lesser floats towards this phase, ie utility sector such as the electrical, water, fire fighting are needed first for startup maybe.
Repeated posting and trying to delete this.. Still trying.
I am with Gary on this
Hi Ronn,
there exists only one critical path in your case.
if you can get the tentative completion dates of different areas, from the previous contractor who will be releasing areas to you.
and of course, you are expected to start from the deepest point, which is gonna take the longest duration to come up to the groud level. so this will be the first critical item for you. this is followed by the completion of the other buildings. i hope construction of those buildings would be parallel, since resource is not a problem and you have a huge area to work.
now, you list the building completion in chronological order, you have the critical path of your project.
hope this helps u!
good luck!
Hi Ronn
Gary's suggestion is a simple solution to a common problem.
Alternatively if you want to put all the sections on one programme in P6 then one option is to put temporary "must end by" constraints - and I mean temporary - to show the critical path for each section.
They must be removed again before any adjustments or progress reporting.
Alternatively you can place a dummy task at the end of each section called "Forced Critical" that extends to the end of the whole project and linked to the final completion date - again this will have to be adjusted at the end of each progress report.
In Asta Power Project you can show the critical path of each section or the whole project by opting for a local reschedule or project reschedule.
Best regards
Mike Testro
Ronn,
If each sub-area is truly independant (ie no logical links between them & no shared direct resources), then treat them as a programme of seperate projects, each with their own critical path.
Cheers,
G