Joe has worked for Blanque Cheque Construction (BCC) for five years, mainly in administrative positions. Three months ago, he was informed that he was being transferred to the firm's project management group. Joe was excited because he realized that project management was typically the career path to the top in the BCC, and everyone had to demonstrate the ability to "get their feet wet" by successfully running projects.
Joe had just left a meeting with his superior, Jill, who assigned him project management responsibilities for a new construction project the company had successfully bid. The project consisted of developing a small commercial property that the owners hoped to turn into a strip mall, directly across the street from a suburban college campus. The size of the property and building costs made it prudent to develop the property for four stores of roughly equal size. Beyond that desire, the owners make it clear to BCC that all project management associated with developing the site was BCC's responsibility.
Joe sat in his office at BCC trying to develop a reasonable project plan, including laying out some of the important project activities. At this point, he was content to stick with general levels of activities; that is, he did not want to get too specific yet regarding the various construction steps for developing the site.
a. Develop a project network consisting of at least 20 steps that should be done to complete the project. Be sure to indicate some degree of precedence relationship among the activities.
b. Suppose you now wanted to calculate duration estimates for these activities. How would you make use of the following approaches? Are some more useful than others?
i. Expert opinion
ii. Past history
iii. Mathematical derivation
c. Joe was trying to decide which scheduling format to employ for his planning: AON or AOA. What are some of the issues that Joe should first consider prior to choosing between these methods?