Department of Civil Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Principles of Construction Management

TUTORIAL - II

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 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Crashing of Network

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 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
BACKDROP

• Construction projects involve considerable amount of time and

money.
• Activities in the projects have to be scheduled such that they
complete within minimum time and cost.
• In our earlier discussions, we have seen that both time and cost are
largely dependent on the RESOURCES allocated to individual activities
in the project.
• One of the important features in network analysis (like CPM) is the
duration of an activity can be reduced to certain extent by increasing
the resources assigned to it.

In this lecture, let us look the concept of reducing the project duration
by reducing the durations of critical activities in the project by increasing
resources. 3
 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

What are the components of total project cost?

• Direct cost
 Expenditure that is specific to a project, i.e. cost of materials,
labour, equipment etc.
• Indirect cost
 Expenditure like tariff for infrastructure facilities, rent etc.
constitute indirect cost.

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 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Cost-time trade-off

The analysis of inter-relationship between time and cost of a project, in

order to minimize its cost and duration is called cost-time trade off.

By reducing the duration of

individual activities, total cost of
the project can be reduced to an
optimum level.

Source :- http://osp.mans.edu.eg
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 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Crashing an activity:
Expediting an activity to an earlier time by mobilizing more resources is
known as crashing

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 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Procedure for carrying out crashing of network

Following steps shall be carried out for crashing a network

1. Identify the critical path/paths of the network and the
corresponding activities. Determine the project cost.
2. Find the cost slope of critical activities.
3. Rank the critical activities in the ascending order of the cost slope,
and crash the activities in the critical path as per the ranking.
Activities can be crashed only till their respective crash durations.
4. Calculate the revised project cost.
5. Repeat steps 1-5 till the optimum cost and duration are obtained.

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 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Problem:
A project consists of SIX activities A to F. The interdependencies, normal durations, crash
durations and cost slopes for all the activities are shown in Table 1.
Activity Predecessors Normal Crash Cost slope
duration duration (INR/day)
(days) (days)
A --- 18 14 4000
B --- 23 22 2000
C A 8 5 6000
D A 10 6 4000
E B, C 3 2 8000
F E, D 8 6 5000

You may also note the following information regarding this project: The total normal
project cost (if durations of all the activities are their respective normal durations) is
1,00,000 INR. The indirect cost for the project is 8000 INR/day.
What is the minimum cost using which the project can be completed? Also,
determine the corresponding project duration. 8
 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

In addition to cost and time recovery, the early

completion of the project has following benefits:

 Recovery of delays
 Early availability of the resources for other projects
 Receive early completion bonus
 Avoidance of seasonal issues which may affect
productivity
 Improved project cash flow

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 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
REFERENCE BOOKS

• Jha K.N., Construction Project Management- Theory and practice, 2nd

Edition, Pearson India Education Services Pvt. Ltd., UP, India 2015
• Kerzner H., Project Management- A systems approach to planning,
scheduling and controlling, 10th edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New
Jersey, USA, 2009
• Srinath L.S., PERT and CPM – Principles and Applications, 3rd Edition,
East West publishers, New Delhi, India, 1989.
…….

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 Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

:: Thank you ::

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