21/10/2017

CIV4101 CIVIL ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

Dr. Eng. Seith Mugume (PhD, MUIPE, REng)

Lecturer, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology
Makerere University
Email: smugume@cedat.mak.ac.ug; smugume@gmail.com
Tel: +256 752 258 089

Lecture 4:
Precedence Network Analysis

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Activity Sequencing
• Except for the simplest of projects, there are always some
dependencies between various activities in the project;
• We have already captured some dependencies between
activities in the activity definition process
• Now we want to build some model that represents the flow of
project activities as dictated by the dependencies
• Involves reviewing activities and determining dependencies
 Mandatory dependencies: inherent in the nature of the
work; => Hard logic
 Discretionary dependencies: defined by the project
team; => Soft logic
 External dependencies: involve relationships between
project and ex-project activities
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Activity Logic in CPM

• Precedence assumes that succeeding
activities cannot start until all preceding
activities are complete.
• A predecessor activity is any activity that
must be completed before a given activity
can be started.
• A successor activity is any activity that
cannot start until a given activity has been
completed.

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Precedence Network Analysis

• Also referred to as the Precedence Diagramming Method
(PDM)
• Normal CPM assumptions are that a task B cannot start
until its predecessor task A is completely finished
• PDM allows activities that are mutually dependent to be
performed partially in parallel instead of serially.
• The usual finish-to-start dependencies are “relaxed” so
that the performance of the activities can be overlapped
• The result is that the project schedule can be
compressed (like project crashing in that sense)

Activity Dependences

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Activity Dependences
(Description)
 Finish-to-start: The earliest time the next activity can begin is when
a certain activity is completed. Most common.
 Start-to-start: Is used to show how the start of one activity triggers
the start of a successor activity.
 Finish-to-finish: Necessary for the initial activity to remain ahead of
its successor activity. Completion is contingent upon completion of
its predecessor.
 Start-to-finish: Seldom if ever used in the construction industry.
 Lag: The relationship arrows can have lags associated with them. A
lag signifies that there must be some predetermined waiting period
between activities. A minimum number of days that must elapse
between activities.

Precedence Diagramming
Method (Activity Node Layout)
• Activities are visualised as arrows
• Duration of an activity is fixed (Deterministic)
• Activities are connected by arrows

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Network Report
Excercise: List the minimum information needed to
plan and manage a construction project using a
network schedule.
• Activity Number
• Activity Description
• Planned Duration
• Early Start
• Early Finish
• Late Start
• Late Finish
• Total Float

Forward and Backward Passes

• A forward pass on a network schedule is
applied to compute:
– The earliest time each activity in the network can
start and finish.
– The minimum overall duration of the project.
• Forward calculation:
– Earliest start time = max {earliest end of all
direct predecessors}
– Earliest finish = earliest start + duration

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Forward and Backward Passes

• A backward pass on a network is applied to
calculate the latest time that each activity in
the network can start and finish and still
maintain the minimum overall duration of the
project as calculated by the forward pass.
• Backward calculation:
– Latest end required = min {latest start required
of direct successors}
– Latest start required = latest end required -
duration

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Precedence Diagram Method

Exercise

• Calculate the forward and backward passes

• Identify the critical path
• Calculate the float (slack time) for each path
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References
1. Creating Schedules using the Precedence Diagram Method
http://classes.sdc.wsu.edu/classes/cstm462/Lecture%207-
%20Creating%20Schedules%20using%20PDM.pdf
2. Gabriel S. A (2009) Management Science Applications in Project
Management. Lectures 5-7 Project Management LP Models in
Scheduling, Integer Programming
3. Held T (2009) Project Management. Lecture Notes. Hamburg
University of Technology

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