Project Scheduling

Course No. 475

(Course Outline shown below.)

For Whom Intended  This course is intended for individuals who have responsibility for managing an activity that involves multiple resources and numerous interrelated activities. Project Management and Scheduling have long been used in the engineering and construction industry. They are equally applicable for many other activities, such as Program Management; Planned Maintenance; New Product Design and Development; Environmental Engineering Lab. Testing; Oil Platform Activities; Quality Acceptance and Contract Test Observation Activities; Movie Production; Logistic Coordination; Agricultural Production; Machine Shop Production; Utility Outage Activities; Post Office and University activities; etc. and the many varied activities within the Military organizations and establishments.

With the availability of easy-to-use and inexpensive software, project scheduling is a tool that personnel at foreman level can use to improve productivity and reduce delays and associated costs.

Objectives  Project management is the planning, organizing, and managing of tasks and resources to accomplish a defined objective, usually with constraints on time and cost. Where a project involves more than a few tasks, or if there are several resources to track, project management will assist in meeting the defined goals or highlight any potential problems early so that suitable action can be taken. Managers can use project management concepts and tools to manage their work more effectively.

The goal of project management is to achieve a specific objective within a given deadline and budget. An objective can be as simple as planning the design and production of a newsletter, or as complex as designing and building an automobile. In each case, the project has to be divided into easily manageable tasks or activities. These tasks are then scheduled and activities related to the tasks are tracked as the work progresses. The tasks can be considered as the building blocks of project management. Resources, such as cash flow, manpower, equipment and material required can be assigned in a timely manner to accomplish the various tasks.

Project management can assist in obtaining answers to various scheduling, resource, and cost questions, such as:

• How long will this project take?
• If a particular task is delayed, will the project be delayed?
• Which tasks are critical to meeting the schedule?
• Are there enough resources to finish the design/test as scheduled?
• What are the resource costs for the design/test ?

Brief Course Description  Using a combination of lectures, exercises and hands-on demonstrations, the instructor introduces key concepts and guides the students through the three phases of project management, as described below:

Creating the project

is the most important phase. It includes defining the tasks and their durations, setting up relationships between the tasks, and assigning resources to the tasks. All of the project's later phases are directly based on the information provided when the project is created.

Managing the project

includes tracking and adjusting the project to reflect changes that occur as the project progresses. Project management is an ongoing process that begins once the project is created and ends when the project is complete.

Producing reports

on the project, such as the Gantt Chart, which consists of a table of task information and a chart that graphically displays the project schedule. The chart displays each task as a bar, which shows the tasks start and finish dates and duration on a time scale. Another project report commonly used is the PERT Chart, which provides a network view of the dependencies between tasks in a project.

Certificate Programs  This course may be used as an elective for any TTi specialist certificate program.

Prerequisites  None; however an understanding of Microsoft Windows applications programs will be useful.

Text  Each participant will receive a course workbook, including most of the viewgraphs used during the presentation and a copy of the Microsoft Project Step by Steptraining manual plus a floppy disk of practice files.

Course Hours, Certificate and CEUs  Open courses meet seven hours per day. Upcoming presentation dates can be found on our current open course schedule. Class hours/days for on-site courses can vary from 14-35 hours over 2-5 days as requested by our clients. Upon successful course completion, each participant receives a certificate of completion and one Continuing Education Unit (CEU) for every ten class hours.

Course Outline No. 475

• Project Management Overview
• The concept of Project Management
• What is a Project?
  • Why is Planning and Control Necessary?
  • The Systems Design Approach — Methodology of Project Planning and Control
  • Computer software application programs
• Critical Path Method (CPM)
  • Network Planning
  • Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM)
  • Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
  • Scheduling tasks
  • Task Relationships
  • Lead or Lag time
  • Task constraints
  • Strategies for shortening a schedule
• Project Costs
  • Why assign costs to tasks and resources?
  • Resource cost vs. task cost
  • Controlling cost
  • Tracking project budgets
  • Setting a project to the calendar
  • Define calendar working time
  • Project calendars/resource calendars
• Managing Project Resources
  • Resources: People, Equipment and Supplies
  • Resource vs. fixed duration scheduling
  • Managing resources with a project schedule
  • Resource cost, overallocation
  • Assigning multiple resource units
• Creating a Baseline Schedule
  • Variance from the baseline plan
  • Schedule adjustments
  • Cost variance
  • Recording interim plans
• Creating and Organizing a Project Plan
  • Outlining the schedule
  • Project Tasks
  • Adding people and equipment to the project
  • Working with resources
  • Evaluating the schedule
  • Viewing the project plan
  • Controlling the project
• Schedule control
  • Tracking progress
  • Schedule updates
  • Modifying un-started tasks
  • Cost reports
  • Earned value reports
• Reporting
  • Information flow
  • Types of reports
  • Benefits of a successful reporting system
  • Strategies for reducing project costs
• Sharing Project Data
  • Making the most of the PC scheduling platform
  • Exporting and Importing files and data
  • Formats
• Application of project scheduling
  • Job templates
  • Resource pool
  • Individual and overall project schedules
• Class Project — After each topic, the instructor will demonstrate the application of MS Project to that topic. By the end of the course, participants will be familiar with each phase of the project schedule as outlined in the software program and the production of various reports.
• Summary, Final Exam
• Award of certificates for successful completion

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