The Use of Project Scheduling Techniques in the UAE Construction Industry (original) (raw)
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FUDMA JOURNAL OF SCIENCES
Project cannot be done without planning, scheduling and an estimation of its duration for completion. Every project that has to be undertaken must have a deadline for it completion but not every project goes as schedule. Hence, applications of scientific method such as CPM, PERT are often very useful in project management and scheduling. This study was on the application of CPM in scheduling a building construction taking a case study of Mosul Estate building construction. Analytical research design was adopted for the study as the design suit the study at hand. Secondary data of the activities, their descriptions and predecessor as while as their duration were obtained from the construction site. The network activities diagram, the forward and the backward pass obtained by the temporary ordered routing algorithm (TORA) were drawn and the critical path represented in bold arrow heads. The results show that if CPM is applied into the project, the project can be completed in 27 weeks ...
Project Scheduling Tools and Techniques for Effective Construction Management
Advances in Multidisciplinary & Scientific Research Journal Publication, 2019
Project scheduling has identified as a key aspect in the planning of any construction project. Any construction project that is to run smoothly needs to have a time-based plan of events for efficient resource allocation and effective project delivery. Project managers use a variety of tools and techniques to develop, monitor, and control project schedules. This paper seeks to examine project scheduling tools used in building construction project management in order to identify key methodologies employed towards achieving a sustainable construction management process. The use of literature review as a data collection tool will aid in achieving the aim of the research. This study expects to provide valuable information and guidelines for how and when to use these tools, putting the concept of project scheduling in construction management within the local context. This research will be used to learn about the requirements and restrictions that accompany the use of project scheduling tools and to learn about the similarities and differences between these tools. This research also generally seeks help students and researchers by adding to the body of knowledge on these project scheduling tools and provide guidelines for the use of these tools in order to achieve efficiency. The beneficiaries of this research project will be project managers, contractors, clients and other professionals in the building industry.
Many industries, including construction, have been using CPM scheduling for a very long time. However, due to the increasingly competitive business environment, tighter time constraints are becoming the norm of the industry. And as a result, more projects are slipping behind schedule. This led some to call for more efficient means to plan and schedule projects. Following to the introduction of the theory of constraints (TOC) by Eli Goldratt, a new and innovative project scheduling paradigm emerged; that is Critical Chain (CC). This technique is evolving year after another, with documented success stories in some of the biggest multinational companies in the world. However, it seems to be almost unknown within the construction industry, at least in the Middle East where the study was carried out. To better understand the potential of applying CC in construction, this study aimed to: (1) measure the readiness of construction professionals in two Middle East countries to adopt CC, (2) determine suitable project type(s) for its pilot application, (3) identify any technical obstacles to applying it, and (4) investigate means to overcome such obstacles. To this end, CC introductory seminars were organized in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Questionnaire surveys were disseminated after these seminars to solicit feedback on these issues. One of the survey's findings is that linear projects, e.g., pipeline construction projects, were pointed out as potentially suitable for CC pilot application. An obstacle identified by construction professionals to hinder CC real life application is estimating the aggressive but achievable duration (ABAD). This term refers to fundamental parameter upon which the CC calculations are based. The paper briefly discusses how the intelligent capabilities of case-based reasoning are utilized to help facilitate the estimation of ABAD.
Determining the Basic Principles in Managing Project Schedule for Construction
2005
The application of the scheduling software has been quite popular in Malaysia recently. Planning software like Microsoft Project and Primavera had been used to develop the schedule for construction project for the purpose or project monitoring and control. Many clients organization have made the task to submit computer generated schedule as mandatory. However in real practice the schedule submitted has not been very useful for the client. In some instances the schedule has been ignored once submitted to the client. There are many problems associated to this situation. Among them is due to the absent of the standard guideline that can be used to manage the schedule itself. The contractor. Contractor has been prepared the schedule based on their own assumption and without much consideration for actual application for the project later. Therefore this short term research has been conducted with the main aim to develop such guideline. The methodology adopted for the study includes the interviews with panel of professional in construction and questionnaire survey. The development of the guideline is based on the feedback by the respondents of the questionnaires survey conducted. Prior to that, the research has also investigated the current state of arts of the scheduling practice in Malaysia and its limitation. The major finding of the research is the development of the guideline for managing the scheduling process. This guideline can be used by the major client to regulate the process of preparing, submission and updating the project progress. It is expected that this schedule can be improve further by improving its level of comprehensiveness.
International Journal of Engineering Technologies and Management Research, 2021
Planning and scheduling is extremely important role in construction projects thank to the increasing difficulties during this field. Construction Planning is that the necessary warning to Scheduling and determining general sequence, defining labour tasks, construction methods and assigning responsibilities, inappropriate planning can cause major delays with the project work.. For planning and scheduling work requires huge amount of paperwork, which makes the management very burdensome. In this research two software’s used which describes about the project as per the software working. Purpose of MSp & P6 is to analysis the project to know the completion dates. During this analysis of software’s procedure for project starting dates of the projects and baselines are fixed, based on work flow predecessors are fixed and final dates area approached. As the option of calendar’s are more in P6 it gives precise calculation These problems may be solved employing a project management software which helps to grant a planned approach to planning. Nowadays use of project management (PM) software as a tool for managing and organizing work has gained its importance in construction industry and continues to grow at a faster pace in other industries also. During this study, attempt is made to check project management software such as MS project and due to the more precise calculation Primavera p6 gives good results as compare to Msp. One of the WSB is considered in both the software’s small analysis is done and final dates of activity and their feasibility is studied.Motivation/Background: Importance of this analysis is to understand about the p6 software and schedules, methodologies to be adapted properly to get the precise project dates.Method: As the option of different calendar’s in p6 it will analyse the project precisely and gives the project dates.Results:P6 will study or analysis entire project dates with comparison of Msp in excel and in Msp project dates are optimized with some % of reduction in WBS and parallel activities dates has been optimized. This study gives the results as P6 will be precise in any of the projects and planning activities.Conclusion:Both the software’s Msp and Primavera P6 has it uniqueness, and this study says for a good results in the project P6 will give a good results in the project scheduling.
International Journal of Engineering Technologies and Management Research, 2021
Planning and scheduling is extremely important role in construction projects thank to the increasing difficulties during this field. Construction Planning is that the necessary warning to Scheduling and determining general sequence, defining labour tasks, construction methods and assigning responsibilities, inappropriate planning can cause major delays with the project work. For the planning and scheduling work requires huge amount of paperwork, which makes the management very burdensome. These problems may be solved employing a project management software which helps to grant a planned approach to planning. Nowadays use of project management (PM) software as a tool for managing and organizing work has gained its importance in construction industry and continues to grow at a faster pace in other industries also. During this study, attempt is made to check project management software such as MS project and Primavera and their feasibility is studied.
International Journal of Civil Engineering Construction and Estate Management , 2010
Abstract This paper reports the methodology adopted in developing a generic procedural framework for evaluating the effectiveness of construction project schedules.A problem is identified from literature that users of the MS Project are not adequately guided in making choice of start date applied in scheduling the project activities. Most users applies as soon as possible while a few apply as late as possible schedules. But the extent to which this is a practical and effective scheduling option is in question. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested using ANOVA in a pilot survey to assess whether or not a problem exist as defined and if solution can be sought in the way and manner conceived.Null of hypothesis 1: There is no significant relationship between start time constraint option and activity start variance. Null hypothesis 2: There is no significant relationship between the start time constraint option and activity finish variance. Results show that F cal= 0.86, F tab = 5.14 at 1 % level of significance and F tab = 10.9 at 5 % level of significance. Since F cal < F tab we accept H1: That there is a significant relationship between start time and activity start variance. This suggests that schedules based on as late as possible experience reduced activity start variability that events are likely to occur as planned. This is desirable.
Computers & Operations Research, 2011
In this paper we examine a construction project involving the building of large concrete slabs for three buildings in an office park complex. There are finish-to-start (FS) as well as start-to-start (SS) and finishto-finish (FF) precedence relationships among the project activities. We prepare an initial project schedule using Microsoft Project and manually validate the results using the precedence diagramming method (PDM) procedure. When the client informs us that the schedule must be shortened we find that Microsoft Project does not have the capability for resolving our particular time/cost tradeoff issues. So we revert to the traditional approach for resolving time/cost tradeoffs in projects and develop an original linear programming formulation for the time/cost tradeoff problem when a project is modeled as a precedence diagram. By combining contemporary (Microsoft Project) and traditional (a linear programming time/cost tradeoff model) project management tools we are able to successfully resolve the scheduling issues associated with the slab construction project. Further, we demonstrate the anomalous effects of start-to-start (SS) and finish-to-finish (FF) relationships via our construction project example in which the solution to the time/cost tradeoff problem requires that certain activities be lengthened in order to shorten the project duration.
Enablers and barriers to project planning and scheduling based on construction projects in Oman
While the concepts of planning and scheduling seem to be adequately discussed in the project management literature, relatively few examples of factors specifically affecting the performance of planning and scheduling are to be found. The study reported in this paper investigated a set of factors identified as enablers and barriers to successful project planning and scheduling of construction projects in Oman. The study adopted a questionnaire-based survey to measure the impact of each factor. The data were analysed using the relative impact (or importance) index (RII). On the basis of RII rankings, the results revealed that the identified enablers and barriers were all considered significant. This could imply that all of the factors should be considered equally from the perspective of project planning and scheduling, including schedule control. In addition, the results suggest that project managers should pay attention to the more significant barriers to mitigate their potential impacts on planning and scheduling. Recommendations for mitigating those barriers are presented. The study provides useful insights into the impact of various factors on the planning and scheduling performance of construction projects in Oman and how improvement might be achieved.
This study presents the effectiveness of scheduling techniques in the success of mechanical construction projects as an essential tool for project planning, implementation, evaluation and control. Improper project resources scheduling leads to time and cost overruns, hence leads to a huge variation. This work focused on scheduled and unscheduled sets of constructed silo tanks. The analyses were based on the combination of scheduling techniques (CPM & Gantt chart) with the aid of Microsoft Project for the scheduled project sets, as these techniques helped in evolving a planned activity resource cost. The corresponding results of the implemented scheduled projects were related to cost per day and their performance evaluated based on earned value analysis. The scheduled and unscheduled project set results were analyzed based on the test of the null hypothesis using F-Test for the equality of variance. Research findings shows that, the combination of scheduling techniques were effective in reducing variance within the scheduled project set, while the earned value analysis exposed the minor variance which existed, the variance were not sufficient to deter the project success. The F-test upturned the null hypothesis and upheld the alternative hypothesis which stated that variance in unscheduled project were greater than those in scheduled project.