Critical Path Method
Creating a project roadmap helps you visualize what you need to do in order to achieve the desired goal. Critical method helps in creating the construction road map. This is a construction management technique that involves mapping out key or basic activities that are required for completing a business along with their timelines. Thus, also helps in identifying critical activities in the project which will majorly decide project success criteria. Project KPIs will include timeline, budget expenditure, resource uses etc. The critical path of construction management is the longest set of tasks that must be completed in time to complete the project. Delay in these tasks will lead to failure in on time project delivery. CPM can provide valuable insight on how to plan projects, allocate resources, and schedule tasks. Use of CPM provides a holistic idea of a project to the planner before execution, this can be used in improving:
- Future planning optimisation: Through target vs actual progress tracking we can get a idea for future projects.
- Effective resource management: Planning resources as per critical activities and allocation should be even throughout the project.
- Bottleneck resolution: In the CPM network, we can visualise dependency activities and tasks which can run parallel.
Procedure to prepare CPM:
- Listing of all activities along with clear Job description
- Identifying dependencies in between the activities
- Creating network diagram showing all activities and events
- Estimating individual task durations from earlier experience
- Detecting critical path and activities on that path
- Total project duration evaluation
- Float calculation and optimisation If required
Analyse and interpret the detailed network:
- Compress the schedule of activities for minimizing project deliveries
- Shifting of activities to attain optimisation in terms of resource/timeline allocation
- Even resource allocation to avoid any sudden requirement
- Reference for future planning and management
There are other methods like PERT and gantt chart which can be used as replacement. Every method has its own advantages and disadvantages with a common goal of efficient construction management.