Project Planning And Scheduling Using PERT And CPM Techniques With Linear Programming: Case Study

Completing a project on time and within budget is not an easy task. Project planning and scheduling plays a central role in predicting both the time and cost aspects of a project. This study is aimed at finding trade-off between the cost and minimum expected time that will be required to complete the building project. The data on the cost and duration of activities involved were obtained Angel Estates and Construction Ltd., a construction company based in Ashanti region, Ghana. Both critical path method (CPM) and project evaluation and review technique (PERT) were used for the analysis. The activities underwent crashing of both the time and cost using linear programming, this paved way for the determination of critical path. Further analysis revealed that the shortest possible time for the completion of the analyzed building project is 40 days instead of the expected duration of 79 days. This means that through proper scheduling of activities, the expected completion time was reduced by 39 days. The additional cost associated with the reduction in timing is GH¢1,887.22 which increases the initial expected cost required to complete the project from GH¢57,156.35 to GH¢59,043.57.