THE MANAGEMENT OF RESOURCES – the process of enhancing efficiency and

guiding the use of such project-critical resources as employees, equipment, and tools. As
a resource manager, you'll breakdown all the elements needed to complete a project,
paying particular attention to how their resources are allocated, prioritized, and used so it
stays within budget and on schedule.

WHEN RESOURCES ARE LIMITED (RESOURCE ALLOCATION) – Resource

allocation, as described here, uses the precedence diagram as the basis for the
solution. The next step is to clearly define the limitations of the availability of a specified
resource or resources. Any number of limited resources may be defined; however, the
manual solution of a network becomes quite cumbersome with more than two
resources. The assumption of limited resources may extend the project duration beyond
the completion time that would be predicted if no resource constraints were imposed. If
the duration is extended excessively, management decisions may be required to resolve
the conflict between the limitation of resources and the project duration.
The rules for scheduling activities with limited resources might be summarized as
follows:
 Schedule activities to start as soon as their predecessors have been completed.
 If more than one activity using a specific limited resource can be scheduled,
priority is given to the activity with the earliest late start.
 If the activities are tied for the early late start date, give priority to the activity with
least total float.
 If the activities are tied for total float, give priority to the activity with the largest
number of resources.
 If the activities are tied in the number of resources, give priority to the activity that
has already started (top priority in the series method).
 If no activity has been selected with the above rules, simply start the activity that
occurs first in the input order. Any other rule could be used here. After the other
rules have resulted in ties, there is probably no great consequence associated
with selecting one activity over another.
The Manual Solution for Resource Allocation - An examination of the manual
approach for resource allocation will give a clearer impression of how this is done. To
demonstrate the manual solution, a simple network will be used. Although this will
appear to be quite a manageable task, projects entailing many activities and many
resources pose a considerable challenge in a manual solution.

WHEN PROJECT DURATION IS FIXED (RESOURCE LEVELING) - Resource leveling,

while not constrained by limited resources, tends to reduce the maximum demands for a
given resource on any given day. This is desirable, particularly where personnel are
concerned, because it helps avoid or minimize the need for hiring short-term workers.
THE MANUAL SOLUTION FOR RESOURCE LEVELING –
The calculation of the improvement factor forms the basis of the leveling decisions. The
general equation for determining the improvement factor (IF) can be stated as follows:
IF ( A , N )=R ×( R V −R o−R × ( N r ) )
Where;
A = activity designation
N = number of free float days consumed
R = the number of resources used by the activity per day
Rv = number of resource days currently assigned to those days that will be vacated
when the activity start date is changed
RO = number of resource days currently assigned on those days that will be occupied
when the activity start date is changed
Nr = the smaller value of the number of days of free float consumed and the duration of
the activity