Longest Path

As a scheduler always deal with the longest path which may I say is very popular between managers. They dont
care about details or see many activities. What they want is whether the project is going to be late and see the
most critical path or what I call the longest path.
Longest path is the longest continuos path of a project. There are different ways to obtain this path.
Forward Pass is the forward pass calculating the early date
Backward Pass is the pass calculating the late date
Early Dates are the earliest date an activity can start or finish
Late Dates are the latest date an activity can start or finish
Analyzing the following example we will create simple rules to calculate the critical longest path and its
methodology.

Forward Pass
First find the early start (ES) and early finish (EF) moving forward. The calculation begins with activities without
predecessors. Primavera assigns the Data Date which will be Day 1.
Then Primavera calculates the early finish as follows;
early finish (EF) = early start (ES) + (Duration) - 1

Backward Pass
Primavera assigns the latest Early Finish date calculated in the Forward Pass to Late Finish of activities without
successors. Primavera calculates late starts as follows
late start (LS) = late finish (LF) (Duration) +1
Total Float is determine by the difference between late finish and early finish, calculate as follows
(Total Float) = (Late Finish) (Early Finish)
Our final result from the example is

Free Float vs Total Float

04 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
by civilprima in Primavera
I have dealed with many managers with not idea of the meaning between free and total float. This is something
that schedulers deal every day in every project. In my case I believe that total float is more meaningful from
the broadwide project view.
Lets look at the example below

It the example the project finish date is 28-Feb-2011. Then

Free Float = Working days between the activity a its successor. The amount of time that a schedule activity can be
delayed without delaying the early start of any immediately following schedule activities. Activity 3 the finish date
is 07-Jan-2011. Its successor is Activity 6 and the start date is 24-Jan-2011 = 10 working days.
Total Float = Total float is the number of days an activity canbe delayed without delaying the project completion
date. So start with the project finish date 28-Feb-2011 and the Activity 6 finish date 4-Feb-2011. Total float of 16
working days. Fot the Activity 3 = 16 days + 10 days = 26 days.
Conclusion. I tried to ilustrate is my own words the difference of free float and total float I hope you find it helpful.