13 - Project Scheduling: Critical Path Methods, Program Evaluation, and Review Techniques

Summary

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

Henry Ford

Entrepreneur’s Diary

Planning for my new fish farm start-up was going pretty well. After all, I had twenty years of experience at doing this. I thought I had everything under control. One of the major rules with starting a fish farm was that the backup generator be in place before you stock fish on the farm. This is because in the event of a complete power loss, you have about fifteen minutes to get the pumps working again or you’ll lose all your fish. I knew this. We were having one of our preconstruction meetings the week before we were breaking ground. Someone asked me about the backup generator. I said, “Don’t worry, these are pretty much stock items and we can get them on short notice.” Wrong! When I called our intended supplier, he informed me that these units were all custom built and the lead time was ten weeks. Fortunately for me, we wouldn’t be stocking fish for at least twelve weeks. I immediately ordered the generator. What’s the point? I should have constructed a network showing the interdependencies of all activities and events that would lead up to a successful conclusion of the project. If I had done this, I wouldn’t have had the shock I encountered. In my case, I was fortunately able to recover. Don’t rely on blind luck. Learn the basics of the two types of networks: the Critical Path Method (CPM) and PERT (Performance Evaluation Review Technique) charts. You won’t be sorry or be left up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Project Scheduling

In project implementation the major concerns are: time, cost, and scope. In the project implementation phase, time is money. Longer completion times generally lead to higher costs. Mistakes and oversights are unnecessary costs; plus, it takes more time to correct them, compounding the situation. Not properly identifying the scope, or end objectives of the project will also impact cost and your ability to schedule events accurately in a sequential manner. Proper contingency planning can help avoid these unnecessary cost and schedule impacts. Of course, the costs avoided by careful and detailed planning cannot be quantified. Cost avoidance is a nebulous concept. Did you really save $5,000 in medical expenses by getting a flu shot? You’ll never know. You do know that the flu shot cost $20, however.