Assignment SIX
Objective: Practice
working with the Gantt Chart and tables, formatting the view, and crashing the
critical path.
Assignment: Open the
file, Building.mpp from the course website and complete the steps below. This is an apartment building and the
contractor (you) has chosen to plan the project schedule for the whole building,
rather than apartment by apartment. This
means many activities are set up with overlap, based on one type of work being
started for the building, but staggering follow-on work enough to allow each
crew to get through one or more apartments.
Sometimes lag times are built in to allow for paint drying or for
flooring adhesives to totally dry. Name
the file that you will turn in to carl as Building-Your Initials.mpp.
Suggestions
and Observations: After you complete the steps below, make a copy of
the file (so that you do not alter the file you will turn in to carl) and try
changing logic or constraints to see the types of impacts that occur. Reschedule some items the way you think you
might approach them, or just make changes and try to guess the outcome of the
change before you actually do it.
Some of the logic built into the file may not make any
sense when you first look it over. Part
of the reason for that is because you do not have plans and specifications for
the project, so just by viewing the schedule, you really do not know the extent
of the work being done or why certain items have any dependency on each
other. This is okay—don’t try to
overanalyze why the predecessors are set up the way they are currently. This is just a longer starter file for you to
work with and hopefully stimulate your thought process a little more on the use
of predecessors.
We use dependencies to try and reflect all the things that
impact the start or finish of any given task.
Some tasks are really only dependent upon one other task. Others may have a few tasks that impact when
the current task can start, while another of its predecessors has an effect on
when the task can (or has to) finish.
The result may be that only one predecessor is really “driving” the
current task. The reason for assigning
multiple predecessors to a task is to insure that anything that can impact the
task, even if it currently does not drive the task, is reflected.
Too many predecessors can confuse things and are sometimes
redundant. For example, if task 1 drives
task 2 and task 2 drives task 3, all in Finish-to-Start relationships, it is
superfluous to assign both tasks 1 and 2 as predecessors to 3. Task 1 is already impacting task 3 via task
2. Consider another situation, where
testing water flow through plumbing fixtures is dependent of course on the
rough-in plumbing and the finish plumbing (sinks, toilet fixtures, etc.) being
in place. Meanwhile, there are new water
lines being run outside the building which are under a separate, but overlapping
phase of the project. Certainly, the new
water lines have to be hooked up and working in order to have water in the
building.
Always consider that tasks under other summary groupings
(phases) within a project can have a relationship to the current grouping. This means that a task may have a predecessor
with a Task ID higher than its own Task ID.
Remember that the tasks do not have to be laid out in perfect numerical
sequence of when they will occur. In
fact, that is not possible in most all projects.
You will hopefully gain some insight as to how Project 2000
reacts to logic changes while doing the case study steps below, but you will
really learn more from it if you play with a copy of the file on your own. This way if the copy gets really far off from
what the original looked like, you can always go back to the initial file we
gave you or the one that you used for completing this extra case problem. So, have fun with an extra copy of this file
and get comfortable with how you can make the logic work the way that you want
it to and try out things that you may be curious about. The steps given below for the assignment five
are pretty easy to follow and you may not always know why you are doing them. Ideally this exercise will spark some ideas
of you own.
Continually save your work as you complete this
exercise. When you are prompted to save
the baseline, keep the default, which should read something like: Save
‘Building-Your Initials.mpp’ without
a baseline. Just as was mentioned in
Assignment Four, it is not appropriate yet to save a baseline.
1. Study the
project plan. Look for any non-Summary
tasks that do not have predecessors.
2. Notice that
task 55, “Fabricate Metal Stairs to match Field Conditions” has no
predecessor. It is set to start on the
same date as the Project itself starts, as there are no constraints,
predecessors or resource assignments that would tell it to start otherwise. Insert a task just above it. The new task you inserted is now task
55. Name this task “Field Measure Actual
Conditions for Building & Stair Foundations”. Do not let the task duration remain an
estimated duration (i.e., 1 day?); make it a duration of 1 day. This task will not really take a full day,
but it gives us some flexibility to measure any time that day and not don
anything about it until the next day, when the stair fabricator will begin
making the metal stair parts we need.
3. To our
newly created field-measuring task, which is task 55, assign task 54 (“Stair
Foundations”) to it as a Finish-to-Start predecessor. Task 55 will be a Finish-to-Start predecessor
to what has become task 56, “Fabricate Metal Stairs to match Field
Conditions”. Go ahead and make that
predecessor assignment, too.
4. Our
project plan currently has no special formatting and the critical path is not
clearly marked. Run the Gantt Chart
Wizard with the following options as you are prompted for them:
Step 2 – choose the “Critical path”
radio button or option
Step 9 – choose the “Custom task
information” radio button or option
Step 10 – make no selection for now for
the “Left” and “Inside” entries. Choose
“Name” for the “Right” entry
Step 11 – for the “Left” entry choose “Name”
and for the “Right” entry, choose Duration; leave the “Inside” entry blank
Step 12 – for the “Left” entry choose
“Name” and for the “Right” entry, choose Finish
Step 13 – accept the default of “Yes,
please.” in order to show link lines between dependent tasks
Step 14 – Click the “Format It” button
Step 15 – Click the “Exit Wizard”
button
5. From the
menu items, Choose “Format” and then “Bar Styles”. Click on the “Text” tab in the lower half of
the dialog box. Notice in the upper
portion of the dialog box that “Task” is selected and in the bottom portion of
the dialog box, you should see that the “Name” field has been assigned to the
“Right” entry. Our Gantt Chart Wizard
did this. We are now going to assign the
“ID” field to the “Left” entry. We are
changing Bar Styles here, so all bars that are normal, non-critical tasks will
have this property when displayed on the Gantt Chart, unless you assign
something different to a specific bar.
The Gantt Chart Wizard did not give us the option of assigning the “ID”
field, so we are doing this manually.
Leave the dialog box open after you have made the change.
6. Assign
the “ID” Field to the “Left” entry in the dialog box for the Critical Task bar
style also. Now you may click the “OK”
button to put the changes into effect and close the dialog box.
7. There are
a number of views you have to print as part of your initial project schedule
submission to the Architect. Some of
these printouts do not include graphics, so she has asked you to change the
font of any critical tasks only to make them stand out differently from the
non-critical tasks in all reports, even those with graphics, so they are
consistent. You know this is easy to do
in Project 2000, so modify the text styles for critical tasks to be the Times New Roman Font, 9 pt. size, Italics,
color in red. You would not want to
use a boldfaced font, since Summary tasks are also boldfaced by default. Changing the font, font type and size help
the tasks to stand out even on a black and white or grayscale printout. The red color helps the critical tasks to
stand out on the screen and on color printouts, plus it matches the color of
the critical bar styles.
8. Modify
your timescale and change the major scale to months and select the “January
2000” label style. Make your minor scale
weeks, and keep the default label style.
9. Currently,
your project is scheduled to finish on
10. The
results of step 9 tell us that the problem with meeting the
11. Upon
examining the schedule and meeting with several of your subcontractors, your
on-site Project Superintendent tells you that the rough-in work for Mechanical,
Plumbing, Fire Sprinkler, Electrical & Fire Alarm tasks (IDs 12 – 15) could
overlap. Since there are several
apartments, you can stagger these rough-in work items and the crews can follow
behind one another to avoid getting in each other’s way. They have agreed to the following:
11.1 The Rough-In Plumbing and Fire Sprinkler can both start 5 days after
Mechanical starts
11.2. The Rough-In Electrical & Fire Alarm work may begin 10 days after
Mechanical, or effectively 5 days after plumbing and fire sprinkler begin
Change the predecessors for Tasks 13 and 14 to be “12SS + 5 days”. Change the predecessor for Task 15 to be
“12SS + 10 days.” Notice now that you
can meet the deadline date of 10/15/2001 and a number of the interior tasks are
no longer critical.
Now change the “Finish No Later Than” constraint on task 76 to an earlier
date. Then change it to a later date,
like 11/1/2001 and watch what happens.
Since you can complete by 10/15/2001, but you moved your constraint date
to be 11/1/2001, you actually have slack time built into the project, so the
Total Slack numbers are all greater than zero, and by default, not marked as
critical. Now change the FNLT constraint
date back to 10/15/2001. This is the
constraint date on task 76 that should be set when you turn your file in to your
instructor.
12. Notice
that critical tasks are marked clearly, but what about milestones that are
critical? We can manually create our own
type of “Bar Style” to depict that on the Gantt Chart. Follow these steps:
12.1. Choose the “Format” menu and then choose “Bar Styles”
12.2 In the upper portion of the dialog box is the list of Bar Styles. Click on the existing Milestone Bar Style and
review the settings on the “Bars” and “Text” tabs
12.3. Now scroll down the Bar Style list until you get to the last item, “Group
By Summary”. Click in the row right
beneath that item in the “Name” column and type “Critical Milestone”. This will be the name for our new bar style.
12.4 In the lower portion of the dialog box, click on the “Bars” tab if it is
not already selected
12.5 Note default settings for the “Middle” are chosen. Clear out the “Shape:”, “Type:” and “Color:”
selections for the “Middle” by choosing the blank or outlined box options from
the drop down lists. For color, choose
white.
12.6 For the “Start” column (on the left-hand side), click the drop down box
for the “Shape:” entry, and choose the diamond shape, which is what we used for
regular milestones
12.7 For the “Type:” entry, choose “Solid”
12.8 For the “Color:” entry, choose “Red”
12.9 Click on the “Text” tab, and choose the “Name” field for the “Left” Entry
and the “Finish” field for the “Right” entry
12.10 Look back to the upper portion of the dialog box, for the column “Show
For … Tasks”, choose “Milestone” from the drop-down list, type in a comma after
the word “Milestone”, then choose “Critical” from the drop-down list. This will allow both settings to be in the
column
12.11 In the “From” and “To” columns, choose “Finish”
12.12 When you have completed all of these steps, click the “OK” button
You should notice now that Milestone tasks 74 and 76 show as red diamonds on
the Gantt Chart, since they are critical milestones. If they do not show as critical, ensure you
have completed all the steps in this assignment accurately and that in step 11
above you made the FNLT constraint date on task 76 to be 10/15/2001.
This concludes assignment five. Be sure to check and save your work and email
this file to carl—make certain that you have your initials after the file
title.