Project Planning : Activities Overlapping

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ITSU 2006 [ Lesson 5 ] Copyright © 2018 VIT, All Rights Reserved 1

 Overlapping activities

• Activities in a project are not necessary run in a sequence.

• Activities can be run in parallel, one after another or
paratially-parallel as well.
• Activities are sequenced and scheduled based on
– Interdependency
– Resource availability
• Overlapping activities is a must, prior to determining the
schedule of a project
• Overlapping activities leads to effective identification of
critical path

ITSU 2006 [ Lesson 5 ] Copyright © 2018 VIT, All Rights Reserved 2

 Overlapping activities

• Overlapping activities result in better resource utilization

• Overlapping activities helps project managers identify peak
and low tide periods during the duration of the project.

ITSU 2006 [ Lesson 5 ] Copyright © 2018 VIT, All Rights Reserved 3

 Strategies for overlapping activities

• Overlapping activities that are traditionally performed in a

sequential manner can significantly reduce project delivery
times.
• Overlapping, however, should be approached in a
systematic manner to reduce the costs and risks.
• Information gathered from sector-based case studies and
from the manufacturing domain suggest a formalised
framework for identifying overlapping opportunities and
strategies can be successfully implemented for
infrastructure projects.
• This framework considers activity characteristics, such as
evolution of upstream information and sensitivity of
downstream activities to changes in upstream information,
to identify appropriate overlapping strategies.
ITSU 2006 [ Lesson 5 ] Copyright © 2018 VIT, All Rights Reserved 4
 Strategies for overlapping activities

• Overlapping strategies, such as early freezing of design

criteria, overdesign, and early release of preliminary
information, are selected based on activity characteristics.
• These strategies operate either by speeding up the
evolution of upstream information or by reducing the
sensitivity of downstream activities.
• By aligning overlapping strategies with activity
characteristics, project managers can make better decisions
on when and how much to overlap sequential activities to
reduce overall project delivery time.

ITSU 2006 [ Lesson 5 ] Copyright © 2018 VIT, All Rights Reserved 5

 Overlapping Strategy

• Overlapping dependent activities requires that work on the

downstream activity starts before the required upstream
information is finalised.
• Therefore, the downstream activity must begin with
incomplete, non-optimal, or non-final information.
• The extent to which the information is likely to change is a
function of the evolution of the upstream activity.
• The faster the evolution of the upstream activity, the less
likely it is that upstream information will substantially
change.
• The sensitivity of the downstream activity describes the
extent to which changes in upstream information create
rework in the downstream activity.
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 Overlapping Strategy

• Overlapping two dependent activities requires that either

upstream information be passed downstream sooner (i.e.
speed up evolution) or downstream activities reduce their
sensitivity to changes in upstream information.
• The manner in which this process occurs is referred to as an
overlapping strategy.

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 Fast Tracking and Crashing

• There are many reasons you may want to compress the

schedule.
• One reason might be that your project is late, and you are
running corner to corner to bring your project back on track.
• Another reason may be that you intentionally want to
shorten the duration of the project, although your project is
on track.
• To bring the project back on schedule, or shorten its
duration, you will use schedule compression techniques
such as fast tracking and crashing.

ITSU 2006 [ Lesson 5 ] Copyright © 2018 VIT, All Rights Reserved 8

 Fast Tracking and Crashing

• A delay in the project may happen due to many reasons,

including:
– An unrealistic schedule
– You did not get the promised resources
– An unforeseen incident occurred
– Due to force majeure
• Other times it might happen that, although you are on track,
you want to compress the schedule:
– The client wants to complete the project early.
– You see an opportunity to get another project if you are able
complete the project early.
– Your competitor is about to launch a new product; therefore you
have to hasten the launch your product.

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 Fast Tracking and Crashing

• In project management you can use two techniques, i.e. fast

tracking, and crashing, to shorten the schedule when no
change in scope is required.
• Fast-Tracking
– In fast tracking, you review the critical path to find out which
sequential activities can be performed parallel or partially parallel to
each other.
– It is important to understand that you will review the activities on the
critical path only, because on other paths, activities have floats.
There is no need to shorten the duration of those activities; if you do
so, you are only giving those activities more float.
– However, you should check other paths whose durations are near
the critical path duration, because if the duration of your current
critical path becomes shorter than any other path, it will no longer be
a critical path.
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 Fast Tracking and Crashing

– If any other path has a duration equal to the critical path, it will greatly
increase risk for the project because you now have to manage two critical
paths.
– Once you determine which activities can be fast tracked, you will start
working on them to reduce the schedule.
– The benefit of fast tracking is that it does not cost you any extra money;
however, it comes with some increase in risks, you are now performing
many activities in parallel which were originally planned in sequence.
– Usually sequential activities can be fast tracked by 33%. This mean if the
previous activity is 66% completed, you can start next activity. Here, both
activities will be partially overlapped. Although it will increase the risk, the
level of risk impact should be within acceptable limits.
– Fast tracking helps you reduce the duration of the schedule, within limits; if
you continue to fast track after this limit, it may increase the risk beyond
acceptable levels and lead to possible rework.

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 Fast Tracking and Crashing

• A few examples of crashing techniques are:

– Giving overtime
– Bringing in more resources
– Motivating team members with monetary rewards
– In schedule crashing, you do whatever it takes to shorten the
duration. However, note that you cannot apply this technique to all
activities. For example, in concrete work you have to wait until the
concrete dries before you can start your next activity.

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 Fast Tracking and Crashing

• Crashing
– Crashing is another schedule compression technique where you add
extra resources to the project to compress the schedule.
– In crashing, you review the critical path and see which activities can
be completed by adding extra resources. You try to find the activities
that can be reduced the most by adding the least amount of cost.
Once you find those activities, you will apply the crashing technique.
– While doing crashing, you will keep tab of the other paths as well,
because it is also possible that the duration of other paths could
become equal to, or greater than, the duration of your critical path.
– When you start this schedule compression process, you will initially
get more reduction in duration with less cost input; however, as you
continue with this process, the cost increases at a very fast rate with
a smaller reduction in time.

ITSU 2006 [ Lesson 5 ] Copyright © 2018 VIT, All Rights Reserved 13