Introduction to PERT/CPM

I. PLANNING PROGRAM AND PROGRESS CHART

The most important part of the organization of the work are:

1. The preparation of a comprehensive-time and progress chart for the execution of work.

2. The periodic revision of the chart as circumstances demand, and the regular comparison of progress chart
made with the program.

The project manager is required to prepare an approved time and progress chart, which is generally part of the
main contract documents.

1. The time and progress chart must show an analysis of the chief elements and types of construction
involved in the project.

2. The scheduled dates of commencement and completion of every stage of the main contract and sub-
contracts.

Without the proper program, the construction work can be disorderly managed. The time and progress charts
serve as the coordination and control of all the work under the different sub-divisions of the contract.

The chart should automatically show and offer the following information.

1. The sequence of operations

2. The target time and date for their completion.

3. The rate of which they must be carried out.

4. The owner's staff and the contractor's staff should be familiar with the information given in the chart and
should constantly strive to carry out the work according to the projected rate of accomplishment.

5. If some operations are to be done by subcontractors, they should be notified in advance and given a clear
understanding of what exactly is expected from them.

6. The chart should also tends to prevent changes in the design and layout with the consequent delays and
increased in cost. It also provides essential information regarding labor, materials and plant requirements.
II. PLANNING AND SCHEDULING TOOLS

A. GANTT CHART

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-The Gantt Chart is a tool used for planning and scheduling simple projects. With the chart, the project engineer
can initially schedule project activities and to monitor progress over time by comparing planned progress to
actual progress.

-To prepare the chart, the project manager has to identify the major activities that would be required. Estimates
for each activity are made and the sequence was determined. Once completed, the chart indicates which
activities were to occur including their planned duration, and when they were to occur.

-The advantage of the Gantt Chart is its simplicity, making it very popular, however it fails to reveal certain
relationships among activities that can be crucial to effective project management.

B. PERT/CPM

-CPM (Critical Path Method) was designed as a tool for planning, scheduling and control of construction work.
Its emphasis was on the work or activities to be managed. The network diagram defined and focused attention
on the job to be accomplished. The schedule derives the earliest and latest times for their start and finish.

-PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) was developed as a result of looking for an improved
method of planning and evaluating progress of a large scale research and development program. It was
designed to provide the management a periodic reporting of current status and an outlook for the future on
meeting approved plans and schedules.

-PERT/CPM is a control tool for defining parts of construction job and then putting them together in network
form. It serves as an aid to the construction manager but it does not make decision for him nor does it
guarantee good management.

Today, either of the two techniques can be used with deterministic or probabilities of time. In all major projects of
the government, PERT AND CPM Network is a mandatory requirements.

Under Presidential Decree (PD 1594) . Prescribing Policies, Guidelines, Rules and Regulations for government
infrastructure contracts provides that:

"The program of work shall include, among other things, estimates of the work items, quantities, costs and a
PERT/CPM network of the project activities.. in the preparation of the building documents, the government shall
make and estimate the actual number of working days required to complete the project through PERT/CPM
analysis of the project activities and corrected for holidays and weekends".

III. THE NETWORK FUNDAMENTALS

The network diagram is composed of a number of arrows and nodes. There are two slightly different
conventions for making a network diagram. They are:

1. Activity on Arrow (AOA)- that is using arrows to designate activities.

2. Activity on Node (AON)- using nodes to designate activities.

THE ELEMENTS OF NETWORK DIAGRAMMING

1. Work B cannot start until after work A is completed.

3. A must be completed before either B or C can start.

4. Both A and C must be completed before either B or D can start.

6. D depends on A and B. C depends on A only. Y is a dummy.

PRINCIPLES IN NETWORKING DIAGRAM

Principle No. 1 - Everything in the network or arrow diagram must have a meaning. Thus,

a) Every arrow represents an item of work and is called Activity.

b) An event is the starting point of an Activity represented by a circle, square, or any geometrical form.

c) An Activity is dependent upon and cannot begin until after the completion of all preceding Activities.
 d) All activities that start with the same event cannot begin until after the completion of all activities that
enter that event.

Principle No. 2 - That an activity has a single definite starting point and a single definite starting point and a
single definite ending point.
Principle No. 3 - That network (arrow diagram) does not describe time relationships but rather dependency
relationships.

Principle No. 4 - That the network (arrow diagram) is hardly ever done by a single person.

IV. PRINCIPLES IN NETWORKING DIAGRAM

The fundamental elements of PERT/CPM networking activities are: Activity, Event, and Time.

1) Activity- is the network operations required to complete a task or in some cases, a segment of that task. In
short, it is the actual work between events.

The arrow should always point to the right and arrow which represents activity is identified by a
numbered circle at its tail and another number circle at its point. The description of the activity is written along
the arrow.

2) Events- it is the point in time signifying the beginning or end of one or more activities. It denotes the
completion of all preceding or predecessor activities and the beginning of one or more succeeding activities.

The event is indicated on the network as a circle, square, ellipse, or any form of geometrical symbol
with a number written therein for identification.
 a) Numbering the events follows the construction of the network.

b) No two events shall have the same identification number in the network.

c) For this reason, one or more dummy activities maybe used in a network.

Activities can either be:

a) By their end points such as 1-2 ; 2-4, etc.

b) By letter assigned to an arrow such as; a,b,c etc.

The network diagram indicates the sequence of relationships among major activities on a project. For instance,
activity 2-4 cannot be started according to the network until after activity 1-2 is completed.

3) Dummy Activity- is an arrow on a network showing the dependent relationship between two activities.
However, dummy activity does not represent actual work efforts and does not consume time. Dummy activity
may be used in the network to distinguish between two or more parallel activities.

4) Duration of an Activity- This is the time it takes for an activity to be finished. In short, this is the normal time
duration of a task. Duration activity is the span of time from the Early Start to its Early Finish or from its Late
Start to its Late Finish.

5) Path- A path is a sequence of activities that leads from the starting node to the finishing node. Thus, the
sequence 1-2-4-6 in the network of Figure 4.5 is a path. There are two paths from the starting node to the
finishing node. They are:

(a) Path 1-2-4-6

(b) Path 1-3-5-6

Comments:

(i) The length or time of any path can be determined by adding the expected time of the activities along that
path.
 (ii) The path with the longest time, catches management interest because it governs the project completion
time.

(iii) In short, the expected duration of a project is equal to the expected time of the longer path.

(iv) If there are delays along the longest path, naturally there is also a corresponding delay in project
completion time.

(v) Therefore, any attempt to shorten the project completion time must concentrate on the longest sequence of
activities because of its relation to the completion time.

(vi) The longest path is the critical path and its activities are called the critical activities.

(vii). Paths that are shorter than the critical path may experience some delay but may not affect the overall
project completion time as long as the ultimate path time does not exceed the length of the critical path.

(viii) The allowable slippage for any path is called the path slack or float time. It indicates the difference
between the length of a given path and the length of the critical path.

(ix) The critical path then has a zero slack or float.

ILLUSTRATION 4.1

In the following figure, activity A must be completed first before activity B can be started. Likewise, activity B
must be completed first before starting activity C.

ILLUSTRATION 4.2

In the following diagram, both activity a and activity b has to be completed first before activity c can begin. But a
and b could be worked on at the same time. Performance of a is dependent on the performance of b.
ILLUSTRATION 4.3

If activity a must precede b and c, the network will be as follows:

ILLUSTRATION 4.4
When several activities enter a node, it means that all those activities must be completed first before any
activities that will begin at that node can start. Thus, in the following diagram, activity a and activity b must be
finished first before either activity c or activity d can start.

ILLUSTRATION 4.5

When two activities have the same start and ending nodes, a dummy node and activity is used to preserve the
different identity of each activity. In the following diagram, activity a and activity b must be completed first before
activity c begins.

ILLUSTRATION 4.6
Most computer programs identify activities by their for points. Thus, separate identities are particularly important
for computer analysis. Activities with the same end points could not be distinguished from each other although
they might have different expected time.
Dummy activities have several different uses and the following are commonly used.

The primary function of the dummy is to clarify relationships. But as far time is concerned, a dummy activity has
an activity time equals to zero.

ILLUSTRATION 4.7

From the following network, activities a and b both precede activity c. But d's start is dependent only on
completion of activity b, and not on activity a's. Similarly, e is dependent on C.

ILLUSTRATION 4.8

Starting and ending arrows are sometimes used during the development of a network diagram for more clarity.
Rules for Numbering Events in a Network Diagram

1. All events should be numbered starting from left to right

2. No event number should be lower than the number of events preceding it ( left to right direction ).

3. Event number shall increase from left to right.

4. Events should be numbered from top to bottom. Similarly, increasing should be consistent from top to bottom
or from the bottom to top.

When a group of N parallel activities starts from the same event, N-1 parallel activities should be joined to the
subsequent event with dummy activities for identification purposes.

EXAMPLE 4. 1

From the following table of information,

(a) Draw a precedence diagram

(b) Find the critical path

(c) Determine the expected duration of the project.