(07) Reducing Project Time

Question 1

Reasons for Reducing Project Duration.

Answer 1

• Customer Requirements.
  
  • Contract Commitments.
  • Time-to-market pressures.
  • Incentives (e.g., bonuses for early completion).
  • Overhead and goodwill costs.
  • Pressure to move resources to other projects.
  Time is money!

Question 2

Options when resources are NOT constrained.

Answer 2

1. Adding Resources, but there are limits, savings not necessarily proportional.
2. Outsourcing project work, also frees up resources.
3. Scheduling overtime, but has limits, productivity may drop off, using people familiar with the project.
4. Have full time core team, more productive than part-time people.
5. Build an interim solution.

Question 3

Options when resources are constrained.

Answer 3

• Rearrange the order/logic of the project plan to increase the number of critical items in parallel (review soft logic).
• Reducing the project scope, or phase the project so the initial delivery is a ‘cut down’ version.
• Renegotiate quality.

Question 4

Other approaches to accelerating a project.

Answer 4

1. Improving the productivity of existing project resources.
   
   • E.g., eliminating bureaucratic procedures.
2. Changing the working method employed for the activity.
   
   • E.g., altering the technology and types of resources employed.
3. Increasing the resources.
4. Crashing.
   
   • Decreasing the activity times as far as possible (time-cost trade off).

Question 5

Determining the activities to shorten.

Answer 5

Look for critical activities (on the critical path) that can be shortened, with smallest increase in direct cost per time.

Question 6

Project Costs.

Answer 6

• Direct Costs.
• Indirect Costs.
• Optimal time-cost trade-off.

Question 7

Direct Costs.

Answer 7

• Costs that can be assigned directly to a specific work package or project activity.
• Labour, materials, equipment, subcontractors, etc.
• Crashing activities increases direct costs.

Question 8

Indirect Costs

Answer 8

• Costs that cannot be associated with any particular work package or project activity.
• Administration, consultants, interest, insurance, etc.
• Crashing activities may reduce indirect costs.

Question 9

Optimal time-cost trade-off (step 1)

Answer 9

Prepare a network.

Question 10

Optimal time-cost trade-off (step 2)

Answer 10

2. For each activity, list..
   - Normal cost (NC) and normal time (NT).
   - Crash cost (CC) and crash time (CT).

Question 11

Optimal time-cost trade-off (step 3)

Answer 11

3. Compute the crash cost/time period (slope).

- Slope = (CC-NC)/(NT-CT).

Question 12

Optimal time-cost trade-off (step 4)

Answer 12

4. Find the critical path(s) and determine total normal (direct) cost.

Question 13

Optimal time-cost trade-off (step 5)

Answer 13

5. Shorten the critical path at the least cost by one period at a time.
   - If there is only one critical path, then select the activity that can still be crashed and has the smallest crash cost/period.
   - If there are more than one critical path, then select one activity from each critical path that can still be crashed and has the smallest crash cost/period.

Question 14

Optimal time-cost trade-off (step 6)

Answer 14

6. Update all activity times, if the desired duration or minimum cost schedule has been reached, then stop, else go to step 4.

The total crash cost/period of all selected activities should be the smallest.

Question 15

What if Cost is the Issue? Then, you should..

Answer 15

• Reduce project scope.
  
  • Have owner take on more responsibility.
  • Outsourcing project activities or even the entire project.
  • Brainstorm cost savings options.