Case Summary
The G&E Company is considering the construction of a baseball stadium in Montview for the 2024 season as part of its plans. Because of this, the April 3rd deadline is highly crucial and will play a significant role in the planning and decision-making process for the project proposal. If G&E’s offer is granted, it might provide future projects with classic ball pieces in modern luxury boxes, which gives G&E’s president Percival Young great hope for his company. Ultimately, it will be determined whether or not Young’s company can achieve the project’s needs while still making a profit. This paper will analyze the exploration that uses a network schedule, especially the critical path.
Project Completion
The building of the baseball stadium is set to begin on July 1, 2020, and is expected to be completed by May 6, 2024. This will follow the successful completion of all final inspections, provided that holidays and holiday observances are factored into the project’s timeframe. The completion date is quite far from the target deadline of April 3. The number of days that will be necessary for this project is 975 days; nevertheless, when the holidays and holiday observations are taken into account, the overall length of the project, except for weekends, will be 1,004 days; this symbolizes an average of 29 days or nearly a month past the April 3 deadline.
Critical Path for the Project and the List of Activities
The path in any network schedule with the least spare time is considered to be the critical path of that schedule, which is defined as the allowable amount of time delay that will not influence the project finish date. This is according to the definition provided in the text (Larson & Gray, 2021). Before the beginning of a project, the project manager needs to ensure that the critical path has been identified. This allows the PM to adapt the resources and schedule allotted to tasks that are not on the critical path if there are delays along the critical path (Lee, 2019). According to Lucko, Su, and Thompson (2021), the possible explanation for why delays in this critical path can be so disadvantageous is because of a massive impact that proves an addictive nature of deviations along sequential paths. This means that delays within timelines with correlations will only be multiplied through the sequence of dependent tasks. This explains why delays in this critical path could be so disadvantageous.
Within this project proposal bid, the activities that are on the critical path are as follows: clear stadium site, destroy current stadium, create construction site, push assistance piling, configure lower bowl, build upper steel bowl, implement seats, construct steel canopy, build roof racks, and eventually deploy roof supports, before concluding with the final inspection. All of these activities have the potential to go behind schedule, which would add even more time to the total amount of time that will be needed to finish the work.
Recommendation for G & E to Pursue the Contract
According to the timeline prepared in the network timetable, it is unlikely that this project will be able to fulfill the target deadline of April 3. Given that there is a clause in the contract that stipulates a penalty of one hundred thousand dollars for every day that the project is late, G&E can expect this to be a costly undertaking unless they can modify their timeline or the tasks that are associated with the project. Because of the delay of 29 days, the company will be required to pay a fine of $2.9 million for this project. This means that the initially anticipated profit of $3 million, which the project was expected to make, will now be reduced to being a project that breaks even. This is the ideal situation, where everything goes exactly according to plan.
On the other hand, there is no way of knowing how many further delays and fines could develop before the project’s official completion if there are any delays or unforeseen problems, especially in the crucial path. This is due to the fact that there is no way to know in advance what issues might develop. This is especially important to keep in mind when working along the vital path. It is very common for construction projects to experience delays in comparison to the timetables they had originally planned. (Lucko et al., 2021).
There is a potential for some unanticipated delays to occur due to certain probable risks that could occur within the scope of the project. A risk response matrix, demonstrated by Gray and Larson (2021), was used to gather a few potential dangers that could be associated with this project. Certain aspects require more attention than others because of their potential impact on the critical route. One example of this is the potential for a delay to occur if there are sufficient grounds for objecting to the location of the newly planned stadium. When it comes to the specific day that demolition and building are scheduled to begin, this is currently an issue that cannot be predicted and is unpredictable and could develop.
G&E should not undertake this project because the deadline has already been pushed back from the anticipated timetable. As described in the risk response matrix, several potential hazards have not been accounted for (Meredith et al., 2017). An unacceptable level of negative risk is involved, at least when considering the current strategy. If G&E truly wanted to recognize the bid still, they should review the plan, comprising any proactive float apportionments that were made to protect against possible delays (Su et al., 2020). They should also see if the plan can be amended to be completed nearer to the deadline while minimizing any expenses initially thought to be incurred to provide some wiggle room for meeting the April 3 deadline.
References
Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2021). Project management: The managerial process (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Lee, S. (2019) Optimizing the technology transfer process using Gantt charts and critical path analysis flow diagrams: A case study of the Korean automobile industry. Processes, 7(12). 1-27. Web.
Lucko, G., Su, Y., & Thompson Jr., R.C. (2021) Theoretical quantification of ripple effect of delays in network schedules via activity cruciality. Automation in Construction, 129. 1- 15. Web.
Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., & Mantel Jr, S. J. (2017). Project management: a strategic managerial approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Su, Y., Lucko, G., & Thompson Jr., R.C. (2020). Apportioning contract float with voting methods to correlated activities in network schedules to protect construction projects from delays. Automation in Construction, 118. 1-16. Web.