Developing the Project ScheduleA ke

Developing the Project ScheduleA key advantage of network planning methods is the creation of a schedule of project activities that will help managers achieve the objectives of the project. Given a project network, managers can (1) estimate the completion time of a project by finding the critical path, (2) identify the start and finish times for each activity for a project schedule, and (3) calculate the amount of slack time for each activity.Critical PathA crucial aspect of project management is estimating the time of completion of a project. If each activity in relocating the hospital were done in sequence, with work proceeding on only one activity at a time, the time of completion would equal the sum of the times for all the activities, or 175 weeks. However, Figure 7.2 indicates that some activities can be carried on simultaneously, given adequate resources. We call each sequence of activities between the project’s start and finish a path. The network describing the hospital relocation project has five paths: (1) A–I–K, (2) A–F–K, (3) A–C–G–J–K, (4) B–D–H–J–K, and (5) B–E–J–K.The critical path is the sequence of activities between a project’s start and finish that takes the longest time to complete. Thus, the activities along the critical path determine the completion time of the project; that is, if one of the activities on the critical path is delayed, the entire project will be delayed. The estimated times for the paths in the hospital project network are: