Description:

This one-day course is the first in a series of three which collectively provide a deep understanding of project scheduling, an essential project implementation skill.

The management of time is at the very heart of project management. Indeed many would say that time is mainly what project management is about, cost and quality being constraints on its use. So, as time is such an important issue it must be managed properly. The development of time management was at the start of the project management industry. PERT and developments of it marked the understanding that we should build realistic desk top models of our projects and then test these to gain a better understanding of the uncertainty which lay ahead. It is the building of these models which is the subject of this course.

This one-day course is intended to provide all the basic knowledge of the various styles of time management and an understanding of the terminology. The hands-on exercises underline the importance of thoroughness and detail. Logic is absolute in these early stages and critical path analysis is shown to be a rigorous but very dependable method of model analysis. We use time with some basic resource consideration in order to build our models and then we test the models to see what will happen under different circumstances.

There are many tools available for managing the network diagram and producing the bar charts used to monitor the work and for presentation to those who need to understand how we have represented their needs in the schedule.

Communication is also an important element of scheduling as most of the detailed information will come from others and it is important to agree with them how their information is being used.

Finally, this course will look at the process of keeping the schedule relevant throughout the project and informing those who need to know about progress, as well as the necessary steps to stay on schedule.

An Attendance Certificate will be provided on completion of the course.

Vital Benefits:

This course covers the common scheduling techniques to provide an up-to-date view of current best practice. It will provide you with the information you need to confidently produce schedules for your projects and to recognise the value of thoughtful and well structured plans. This course provides the following vital benefits:

• An understanding of best practice
• An understanding of the tools available and what can be accomplished with them
• A sound knowledge of the fundamentals of scheduling
• An understanding of the importance of doing things in detail and validating the information you use
• Understanding the use of communication to ensure that the information providers are continuously accessible

Objectives:

Scheduling is the very lifeblood of successful projects and every project needs effective scheduling. In this course, it is our objectives to:

• Provide a thorough understanding of the vital need for detail and accurate scheduling on all projects
• Provide you with the basic knowledge to develop a working schedule
• Show how the schedule is used by the project and its significance to all who are affected by time
• Provide realistic exercises to illustrate the complex interrelationships as modeled in the schedule
• Introduce you to risk and how this affects the schedule

Topics:

This course covers the following topics:

• The scoping of the project and the identification of activities
• Work break down structures
• The various types of logic acceptable in scheduling
• An understanding of leads and lags
• The rules of critical path analysis
• Forward and backward pass
• The concept of total and free float
• The critical path
• Special activities
• The development and use of calendars
• Baselines for progress monitoring
• Progress monitoring and negotiating change
• Reports and reviews

Who to Attend:

This is an important course for everyone involved in projects and in particular for those involved in the management of time on projects and for those who want to improve on their planning skill. We recommend it to:

• The client staff
• The project managers
• The project staff
• Line managers
• The professional services teams
• The senior supply chain managers
• Everyone who wants to know more about scheduling
• Anyone who sees project management as a career