American Constructors Inc.: World Outreach Expansion Project.

PART 2 4. Crash the project in order to be finished by the required date:

a) A certain degree of crashing will be possible with info in the case, but if that is not enough you may use other means such as overtime, additional resources, etc. Also, use your understanding of business and human nature. Type and submit rationale for each crashing decision in a MS Word file.

b) ONLY crash lowest level tasks, allowing the supervisory tasks to be crashed only because the tasks beneath them are crashed.

c) You need to have at least one instance of working on the weekend and at least one instance of working overtime during the week - include all of these with your rationale for crashing.

d) You may crash the Lobby construction task (include rationale), but only down to the minimum indicated in the case.

Working with calendars: - There is a Project Calendar and also a Calendar for each Work resource. The default is five 8-hour days with no work occurring on weekends. - To change working times: Project - Change Working Time, choose the Calendar for the Resource, click on day you want to add, Exceptions tab - type name of exception, Details - click on Working Times... - You can do many things with these calendars - two examples are given below: - If there is a day most people will not be working (e.g. Saturday), but you want to have a few resources working on that day, you must set "Nondefault working time" for each of the resources that are to be working. - If you want everyone in the whole project to not do anything for a period of time, can use the Project Calendar to set "Nonworking times" even during regular working hours

5. Resource Allocations: a. First: If a resource is consistently available only a portion of the time for this project, reduce the Max. Units on the Resource Sheet. b. Level the project by fixing any resource over-allocations

Look at the Resource Usage Sheet to see which resources are overallocated on which days.

First, for the human resources on the lowest level tasks, fix remaining issues regarding a person being assigned to do two tasks at the same time. If it makes sense in the case, add precedence relationships that fix this. (We are changing from a technically-constrained to resource-constrained plan, just for lower level activities)

Then to complete the leveling, reduce the percentage allocation on the Gantt Chart (double click on task, Resources tab) OR manually change the hours worked on each task in the Resource Usage View.

If are having difficulty, as a last resort you may use lags and task splitting - but only if that makes sense for the task.

6. Input reasonable cost estimates for all resources

a) Consider which costs would be tracked as hourly wages (Although some of the work resources would be on salary, enter the equivalent hourly rate - this is to track for accounting purposes). Also consider which costs would be charged by piece, which would likely be done by a fixed-price contract, and which may have no monetary cost.

b) The case does not have individual costs reported, so you will have to make up "reasonable" costs for all items. For grading, I will only consider whether a cost is "in the ballpark" - so as long as they aren't completely ridiculous it will be fine. Consider the total remaining cost and have your costs add up approximately to that: it is logical to assume that construction started approximately 18 months before Sept 2009, so the remaining total cost for the last 3 months is only part of the $34M. So if the whole project is going to take 18mo+3mo = 21 months, one estimate of the remaining total cost is 3/21 * $34M = $4.85M, or approximately $5M remaining

c) Tom Grott must be given an hourly wage - we don't know how much he makes on salary, but put in $50/hour (for accounting purposes, project wages are often calculated by the hour even for salaried employees).

d) Do NOT use fixed task costs (the way we assign costs to a Cost Resource is by task, but it only applies to the resource - not the whole task)

e) Do not put in any overtime wages - we assume people are on salary or paid by the hour, and MS Project doesn't handle OT intuitively.

f) Important: Double-check that you have entered costs properly by: from the Gantt chart Entry view, View - Tables - Cost and manually check Work, Material and Cost cost totals for a few specific tasks - be sure to understand where every dollar in this view comes from for a few tasks 7. The project plan is now complete - you are ready to start implementing the project. Therefore, save the baseline (and show the baseline by switching to Tracking Gantt View) Note: Since the baseline has just been saved, the Variance column in View-Tables-Cost should have only zeros in it.

8. Choose a task that has a material resource with a cost and a work resource with an hourly cost.

9. Pretend you are actually implementing the project by setting lowest level activities that occur earlier than the end of the task chosen in step 8 as 100% complete, including 100% for the task chosen in #8. Then consider if there are other parallel tasks/paths that would probably be partially completed by that date (i.e., the end of the task chosen in step 8) and set those to be partially complete so that all paths are close to being on schedule at this date.

ONLY do this for the lowest level tasks, do not implement supervisory tasks because they will be implemented automatically as the ones beneath them are. After doing this, Check 'Gantt Chart, View - Tables - Cost' and 'Gantt Chart, View - Tables - Variance' to ensure ALL variance values are still zero

10. Input a project delay & cost over-run:

For the task chosen in step 8, input it as taking longer than expected - so add some time (in the duration column). Add enough time that the project is past at least one of your deadlines. (Choose the correct drop-down option so that the task actually takes more work than before.) If the above change causes overallocation for any resources, that is fine. Also, for the same task, increase the quantity required for the material resource by changing it on the Gantt Chart, View-Table-Entry

Go to 'Tracking Gantt, View - Tables - Cost'. For every non-zero value in the entire variance column, explain why there is variance. Show the math - TYPE this to hand in. There is an example of this on the last page of these instructions.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors	Successors	Resource Names
American Constructors Inc.: World Outreach Expansion Project Goals and Objectives	81 days?	Thu 9/24/09	Thu 1/14/10
Receive close-out documents from architect	15 days	Thu 9/24/09	Wed 10/14/09		46	Tom Grott
Meetings with Team, Architect & Client	1 day	Thu 9/24/09	Thu 9/24/09		6,20,22,37,17	Tom Grott,Archiects [25%]
Church Construction	80 days?	Fri 9/25/09	Thu 1/14/10
Store/Kitchen/Caf	69 days	Fri 9/25/09	Wed 12/30/09		45
Contrustruction Task	69 days	Fri 9/25/09	Wed 12/30/09
Drywall	23 days	Fri 9/25/09	Tue 10/27/09	2	7,8,9	Cage Drywall,Drywall Materials [1 sheets]
Hard tile	10 days	Wed 10/28/09	Tue 11/10/09	6	12	ACI crew
Stone Column	5 days	Wed 10/28/09	Tue 11/3/09	6	12	ACI crew,Natural Stone Materials [5 tons]
Millwork	21 days	Wed 10/28/09	Wed 11/25/09	6	10	Intergrity Architectural Millwork
Casework	5 days	Thu 11/26/09	Wed 12/2/09	9	11	ACI crew
Flooring Installation	10 days	Thu 12/3/09	Wed 12/16/09	10	14,15	ACI crew
Glass Installation	3 days	Wed 11/11/09	Fri 11/13/09	7,8	13	Glass Materials [1,000 square feet],ACI crew
Painting	10 days	Mon 11/16/09	Fri 11/27/09	12	14,15	Charlie Irwin Painting
Doors and Hardware Installation	8 days	Thu 12/17/09	Mon 12/28/09	11,13	45,16	Carpenters,Doors Materials[50 units]
M.E.P	10 days	Thu 12/17/09	Wed 12/30/09	11,13	45	Roscoe Brown,S&W Electric
Store/ Kitchen/Caf Setup completed	0 days	Mon 12/28/09	Mon 12/28/09	14
Lobby Construction	62 days	Fri 9/25/09	Mon 12/21/09	2	45	Bridget Brodbeck ,Subcontactor,Tom Grott,Cage Drywall,ACoustical Ceiling Tile,Larry Hawker
Sanctuary	62 days	Fri 9/25/09	Mon 12/21/09
Own Crew / Subcontactor	62 days	Fri 9/25/09	Mon 12/21/09
Hanging & finishing drywall	16 days	Fri 9/25/09	Fri 10/16/09	2	30	Cage Drywall
Audiorium seating	62 days	Fri 9/25/09	Mon 12/21/09
Core drill for the rails	2 days	Fri 9/25/09	Mon 9/28/09	2	25,26,31	ACI crew
Carpating at the Rails	5 days	Tue 11/24/09	Mon 11/30/09	25,24	45	ACI crew
Wood Panelling, trim and stage work	25 days	Tue 10/20/09	Mon 11/23/09	26	34,23,28	Intergrity Architectural Millwork,Wood Materials [500 cubic feet]
Rails installing	15 days	Tue 9/29/09	Mon 10/19/09	22	23
Carpeting seats	15 days	Tue 9/29/09	Mon 10/19/09	22	27,24	ACI crew
Painting	20 days	Tue 10/20/09	Mon 11/16/09	32,26	34	Charlie Irwin Painting
Seat at Audi	20 days	Tue 11/24/09	Mon 12/21/09	39,24	35,45	ACI crew
The bowl	60 days	Tue 9/29/09	Mon 12/21/09
Installing seats	20 days	Mon 10/19/09	Fri 11/13/09	20	35	ACI crew
Wood stage step	5 days	Tue 9/29/09	Mon 10/5/09	22	32,33	ACI crew
Stain floor	5 days	Tue 10/6/09	Mon 10/12/09	31	27	ACI crew,Stained concrete Materials [15 cubic yards]
Carpeting at Bowl	5 days	Tue 10/6/09	Mon 10/12/09	31		Commercial carpeting subcontractor
Doors installation and matching handware	8 days	Tue 11/24/09	Thu 12/3/09	24,27	35,45	Carpenters
Santuary Setup Complete	0 days	Mon 12/21/09	Mon 12/21/09	34,28,30	45
The terrace	46 days	Fri 9/25/09	Fri 11/27/09
Window installation	8 days	Fri 9/25/09	Tue 10/6/09	2	38	ACI crew,Windows Materials[30 units]
Waterproofing	7 days	Wed 10/7/09	Thu 10/15/09	37	39	ACI crew
Insulation	3 days	Fri 10/16/09	Tue 10/20/09	38	28,40	ACI crew
Deck completion	8 days	Wed 10/21/09	Fri 10/30/09	39	41,42	ACI crew
Stairs	10 days	Mon 11/2/09	Fri 11/13/09	40	43	ACI crew
Aluminium rails installation	5 days	Mon 11/2/09	Fri 11/6/09	40	43	ACI crew
Mansory on the stairs	10 days	Mon 11/16/09	Fri 11/27/09	41,42	45	Souther States Mansory Inc.,Natural Stone Materials [1 tons]
Post-Construction	11 days?	Thu 12/31/09	Thu 1/14/10
Thorough Clean-up , ACI Punch List Completion and Run Through	4 days	Thu 12/31/09	Tue 1/5/10	4,17,35,43,15,23,14,28,34	46	Tom Grott,Larry Hawker ,Bridget Brodbeck ,Cleaning supplies[1 units]
Fire Marshall Inspection	5 days	Wed 1/6/10	Tue 1/12/10	45,1	47	Bridget Brodbeck
Project complete	1 day?	Wed 1/13/10	Wed 1/13/10	46	48
Project Review	1 day	Thu 1/14/10	Thu 1/14/10	47