Construction And Architectural Management: Resource Planning, Scheduling, And Levelling

Project Resource Planning

Discuss About The Construction And Architectural Management.

Project resource planning offers a variety of scheduling tools which comprises an easy-to-use worktable for developing as well as modification of plan online. Therefore, it is important to optimize a project’s capacities with a date synchronization, sophisticated simulation, as well as impact analysis aspects which will guarantee on-time and on objective projects. Consequently, project resource planning consists of some components:

Progressive service planning: project resource planning offers a complex set of planning tools designed for service-plus material, material-driven, in addition to service only projects. Thus, project resource planning makes plans, synchronise dates, re-plans activities, conducts impact analysis as well as a simulation to make improvement and ensure on-time completion (Wanjari, & Tawalare, 2016). Accordingly, with the help of project management interface application, project resource planning is able to access Microsoft Project to improve scheduling, networking abilities and graphics displays. Through connecting bills and routings of material with service items, project resource planning makes sure that both resources and materials arrive at the desired place at the precise time.

“What ifs” Analysis: Project resource planning provides a range of tools for the development of “what is” scenarios together with analyzing their effect. On the same note, simulation enables the project manager to see the expected variations to planned projects. In this case, multi-level fixing offers complete perceptibility to all items in a bill of resources (Kerzner, 2017). Certainly, impact scrutiny helps to demonstrate the crashed, multi-level impact that could lead to delays. In this sense, project resource planning plays part in reconciling dates between projects, contracts as well as display discrepancies. Thereafter, it can be possible to synchronize dates in accordance with multiple choices to conclude the best plan to project necessities.

Workbench Effectiveness: a workbench gives a sole entry point for developing as well as revising plans in addition to access to the necessary data files (Larson, & Gray, 2015). Indeed, this enables an individual to make ideal usage of the resources by responding swiftly and properly to modifications in scheduling.

Lot-for-lot vs SEIBAN: In order to ensure a cost-effective buying and production, project resource planning enables one to select a consolidated or lot-for-lot planning. When it comes to lot-for-lot planning the supply order quantities are coordinated to demand quantities with variables like scrap aspect put into consideration. Subsequently, this structure allows multi-level pegging and it is particularly significant for make-to-order as well as engineer-to-order items (Tasevska, Damij, & Damij, 2014). On the other hand, consolidated planning in project resource planning is addressed through the SEIBAN functionality. The use of SEIBAN involves the assigning of a unique number to an assembly item, then all components items. In this essence, the cost can be assigned to every component item and then rolled out with the help of SEIBAN costing.

What ifs Analysis

• Dates reconciling
• Impact analysis performance
• Establishing SEIBAN
• Establishing initial dates
• Supply order generation
• Carrying out simulations
• Dates re-planning

Workbench Display: In project resource planning the workbench will only display the followings items:

• Critical items only
• Exceptions alone
• Single level
• Multi-level
• Multi-level status by customer
• Multi-level status by individual demand such as contract
• Workbench by date range, customer or SEIBAN.

Dates Planning: project resource planning can be set to use the following dates for planning:

• Contract material line components such as planned material expected date; simulated material expected date, planned start date, planned end date, simulated start date, simulated end date, task dates referenced to supply orders; simulated material expected date; and planned material expected date (Larson, & Gray, 2015).
• Contract service line components like planned start date, planned end date, simulated start date and simulated end date.

Options for date reconciliation: At the time of reconciliation, project resource planning will have to synchronize dates in accordance with one of the following options:

• Dates can be reconciled to become suitable to the contract item dates
• Contract item dates should be reconciled to be in line with the task dates
• Task dates can be reconciled to match those of the supply orders
• Material line items can be reconciled to be in line with the delivery line item dates

Certainly, project planning, as well as scheduling of resources, play a significant role in project management, which aids to recognize the scope of the project before the actual period in addition to managing and assigning of resources in an organized manner (Meredith, Shafer, Mantel Jr, & Sutton, 2016). Similarly, planning and resources scheduling gives an overview of the persons responsible for delivering what and by when. That is to mean that planning and scheduling provides one with a clear picture of all the things that are taking place in the project lifecycle, which helps in the management of every task through clear communication and coordination.      

Planning starts with the initializing of a project by defining the scope as well as the purpose of the project. At the time of planning, it is expected that the project should be having a project team in place in addition to a detailed and well figured out understanding of the customer’s requirements (Lari et al., 2015). Thus, resource planning entails analysis of the risk log. During the time of planning the project managers is supposed to calculate the cost in relation with the project and at the same time defining the “what, who, why, how and when” of the project. When development of the project commences, the project team and the project manager will have to walk through the project in a thorough planning way to clearly highlight all the needed specifications like what should be done, the person who will be in charge and by what time. Accordingly, planning plays a big role in the managing of the project resources, budget, and time as well as schedule preparation.

Resource Scheduling

Resource scheduling helps the project manager in a number of ways such as

• Providing a basis for monitoring as well as controlling different project activities
• In regard to the project schedule, the project manager can be in a position to determine the way in which to allocate task and resources in the best way to realize the goal of the project
• Time delays assessment and identification of its effect on the project
• It helps to understand and analyse if the project has excess resources to be assigned to other tasks or projects
• Enables the tracking of the progress and status of the project

Resource levelling is an approach in project management used to oversee the allocation of resources as well as to resolve any probable conflicts which could arise from over-allocation. Therefore, resource levelling demands that a project manager when running a project one has to plan their resources in a well-structured manner (Cheng, Prayogo, & Tran, 2015). In doing so, this helps the organization to prevent encountering conflicts and cases of delayed project delivery. Therefore, resource levelling plays an essential role in the managing of resources within a project. Failure to allocate resources in a proper way results in the experiencing of problems and this happens with the over-allocation of certain tasks and under-allocating others, which finally results in financial risk to the project.

Workbench Effectiveness

Since the major goal of resource levelling is to ensure effective resource allocation to enable the completion of the project within the set-out timeframe. As a result, resource levelling has to be broken down into various components, for instance, projects which can be accomplished with the usage of all the resources available while other projects can come to completion using limited resources. Nonetheless, projects that utilise limited resources will have to be extended for some time to make sure that all the allocated resources are used up. On the other hand, if it happens that the project exceeds the allocated resources signed to the project it will be wise to postpone the project until a later date.

Most projects take a structured hierarchy of resource levelling, but for a work-based structure, it is structured in the following way: phase, stage and task or deliverable. These layers help to determine the scope of the project to look for an approach to arrange tasks across the project teams, thus it makes it easier for the project team to accomplish different project tasks.

The core reason for the establishing of dependencies by a project manager is to see to it that all tasks get executed in the desired way (Taghavifard, Amiri, & Sharifian, 2015). Therefore, the project team has to screen the project tasks to point out the right dependencies from those that are incorrect to enable the project to be accomplished in accordance with the set time. Nevertheless, during the process of establishing dependencies project managers incurs certain constraints. Some of these constraints include

Discretionary constraint – these are constraints that are found on the decision or preference undertaken by the project team

Mandatory constraint – such constraints happens because of physical restrictions like experiments

External constraints – these constraints come as a result of needs which include a third party.

The occurrence of resources levelling happens when resources are delegated with task deliverables that need to be executed. At the project starting phase, roles are assigned to resources that are human resources before even these resources are identified. Later on, these roles get assigned to particular tasks that call for specialization.

Resources levelling aids the project to utilize the existing resources to the maximum thus the perspective behind resource levelling is to minimize resource wasting such as to avoid over-allocation of resources to some tasks and under-allocation of the same (El-Sayegh, 2018). Certainly, the project manager has to identify all the resources that have not been used and take measures to prevent such from happening and taking advantage out of it.

Lot-for-lot vs SEIBAN

The most common type of technique applied by project managers in resource levelling is the critical path method. The critical path outlines both the shortest as well as the longest duration paths in a network diagram taken to accomplish a given project (Damci, Arditi, & Polat, 2016). Apart from the use of critical path idea in resource levelling other techniques used include crashing and fast tracking at times when things get out of hand.

Crashing: it is the process of assigning resources extra resources to the existing ones with the target of getting the work done quickly. The process comes with incurring of extra expenses like equipment and labour.

Fast tracking: this process performs a critical path task however, this process takes a longer time.

It should be noted that the primary goal of resource levelling is to ensure efficiency during the process of conducting a project to maximize the usage of existing resources. Moreover, with proper resource levelling, it helps to avert incurring extra expenses.   

	Predecessor	Duration (Days)	Cost/Day
A	–	3	200
B	A	5	150
C	B	4	500
D	A	5	200
E	D	7	300

 

References

Cheng, M. Y., Prayogo, D., & Tran, D. H. (2015). Optimizing multiple-resources levelling in multiple projects using discrete symbiotic organisms search. Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 30(3), 04015036.

Damci, A., Arditi, D., & Polat, G. (2016). Impacts of different objective functions on resource levelling in Line-of-Balance scheduling. KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, 20(1), 58-67.

El-Sayegh, S. (2018). Resource levelling optimization model considering float loss impact. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Lari, L., Jakobsson, M., Gunnarsson, L., Lindroos, M., Jacobsson, G., Conlon, M., & Danared, H. (2015). A Planning and Scheduling System for the ESS Accelerator Project.  

Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2015). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: PMBOK (®) Guide. Project Management Institute.

Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Sutton, M. M. (2016). Project management in practice. Wiley Global Education.

Taghavifard, M. T., Amiri, M., & Sharifian, M. E. (2015). A Multi-Objective Model To Minimize Time And Unlimited Multi-Resource Levelling In Multi-Mode Project Activities. International Journal of Academic Research, 7.

Tasevska, F., Damij, T., & Damij, N. (2014). Project planning practices based on enterprise resource planning systems in small and medium enterprises-A case study from the Republic of Macedonia. International journal of project management, 32(3), 529-539.

Wanjari, S., & Tawalare, A. (2016). Formulation of a Parabolic Resource Profile of Manpower Requirement Using Various Empirical Formulae of Resources Levelling. Procedia engineering, 161, 168-173.