Tag: Total Slack

Resource Leveling Breaks the “Critical Path” – Logic Analysis of Resource-Leveled Schedules (MS Project)

[31Mar’16: The latest release of BPC Logic Filter now includes resource leveling constraints in the logical path analysis.  I’ve written another article to summarize and amend this one:  The Resource Critical Path – Logic Analysis of Resource-Leveled Schedules (MS Project), Part 2 .]

Effective management of resources – i.e. planning, procuring, mobilizing, and deploying – is a core competency for successful companies in project-focused industries like construction.  Most scheduling tools based on the Critical Path Method (CPM) – like Microsoft Project – can generate project schedules without resources, but they also include methods for assigning, analyzing, and “leveling” project resources.  In this context, “leveling” means selectively delaying some work (compared to the CPM-based schedule) pending the completion of other, more urgent works that demand the same resources.

This simple description might imply that a certain logical/sequential relationship is imposed between two competing tasks (i.e. the “less urgent” work can only start after the “more urgent” work is finished with the resources) – sometimes called “soft logic”.  Unfortunately, the leveling engine in Project 2010 does not appear to use, much less preserve, any such soft logic.  Consequently, logical analysis of the leveled schedule – including interpretation of Total Slack to determine critical path or driving logical path – appears invalid.

Figure 1: Simple Construction Project with Resource Loading
Figure 1: Simple Construction Project with Resource Loading

Figure 1 is a simplified CPM model of a construction project involving multiple trades working in multiple areas.  The model includes realistic resource loading, but the logical links have been limited to “hard logic” only (i.e. physical constraints).  In other words, there is no preferential logic to guide the resource deployments.  The default 5dx8h weekly calendar is universally applied, and a deadline of 25Feb’04 has been imposed.  The unleveled CPM schedule includes a forecast completion that is nearly 3 months ahead of the deadline, but resources are severely over-allocated – the schedule appears unrealistic and needs to be leveled.

Specifically:

  1. Three civil works tasks are running concurrently, but there is only sufficient manpower to run them sequentially. (Figure 2.)
  2. Three structural tasks are also running concurrently, and these require both manpower (Figure 3) and a crane (Figure 4), which is the limiting resource. They must be done sequentially.
  3. There is room to install the five separate processing lines concurrently in Area 3, but there is only enough skilled manpower to install them one at a time. (Figure 5).
  4. An electrical change order has been approved in Area 2, but this requires the same specialized crew that is already working there. The Change-order work must be delayed (Figure 6).
Figure 2: Over-Allocation of Civil Works Manpower
Figure 2: Over-Allocation of Civil Works Manpower
Figure 3: Over-Allocation of Structural Erection Manpower
Figure 3: Over-Allocation of Structural Erection Manpower
Figure 4: Over-Allocation of Crane
Figure 4: Over-Allocation of Crane for Structural Erection
Figure 5: Over-Allocation of Mechanical Installation Manpower
Figure 5: Over-Allocation of Area 3 Specialized Mechanical Installation Manpower
Figure 6: Over-Allocation of Specialized Electrical Manpower
Figure 6: Over-Allocation of Area 2 Specialized Electrical Manpower

It is a simple matter to remove the over-allocations by manually executing Project’s leveling engine using near-default conditions (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Resource Leveling Options
Figure 7: Resource Leveling Options

The leveling engine resolves the over-allocations by selectively delaying those tasks (and task resource assignments, if specified) which are judged to be lower-priority according to Project’s proprietary rules.  Figure 8 illustrates the results of the leveling exercise:

Figure 8: Resource-Leveled Schedule
Figure 8: Resource-Leveled Schedule
  1. The primary artifact of the leveling process is the “leveling delay” task property, which is in units of elapsed-duration (i.e. “edays”). The leveling delay is incorporated into the forward-pass schedule calculation, pushing the early start dates of the affected tasks.  (Separate leveling delays can also be applied to resource assignments, which can extend task durations.  This has not been done here and is generally not recommended when assigned resources are expected to work concurrently – e.g. Crane and structural erection crew.)  Leveling delay is also incorporated into the backward pass, removing “phantom slack” from logically-connected tasks.
  2. Through the task leveling delay, the civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical tasks have been re-scheduled sequentially.
  3. Substantial Completion has been delayed until two weeks after the deadline, resulting in 10 days of negative slack on the milestone and its logical driving predecessors.
  4. There is not an obvious (-10d) total-slack path from beginning to end of the project.

Figure 9 illustrates the use of BPC Logic Filter to determine the driving path logic of the Substantial Completion task after leveling.  The driving path is comprised of four tasks and two milestones separated by gaps, and the intervals of the gaps are determined by the “leveling delay.”  Unfortunately, this does not describe a “resource constrained critical path.”  In fact, the obviously critical tasks without leveling delay – including the first (i.e. “A1”) Civil and Structural works and the A2 Electrical works – now have high values of total slack and are shown far from the critical path.  Consequently, it is clear that logical path analysis – including any evaluation of Total Slack – is not consistent with the rule-based resource leveling algorithm used by Microsoft Project.

Figure 9: Logic Analysis of Leveled Schedule

Figure 10 illustrates the un-leveled schedule, revised to include obvious preferential logic for avoiding resource conflicts.  The resulting task sequences and schedule dates are identical to those of the leveled schedule seen earlier, but the associated total slack values and “critical” flags are substantially different.  As shown in Figure 11, however, the logic paths are clear and consistent with the real resource constraints of the project.  The “BPC Relative Float (d): 0” group appears to represent the true resource constrained critical path for the project.

Figure 10: Preferential (Soft) Logic in Unleveled Schedule
Figure 10: Preferential (Soft) Logic in Unleveled Schedule
Figure 11: Logic Analysis of Unleveled Schedule with Preferential Logic

To recap, Microsoft Project’s proprietary resource leveling engine offers a convenient tool for resolving resource conflicts in project schedules, and this functionality seems heavily used and highly valued in some industries.  It does not appear appropriate, however, for use in complex projects where formal logical sequencing of tasks – including identification of Critical Path or Critical Chain – is required. In particular, Project’s “Critical” flag will fail to accurately mark the critical path in a resource-leveled schedule.   Consequently, a project specification that requires both a logic-driven schedule basis and heuristic resource leveling appears contradictory.

[Click here to proceed to the follow-up article:  The Resource-Constrained Critical Path – Logic Analysis of Resource-Leveled Schedules (MS Project), Part 2 .]

Monitoring Near Critical Tasks in Microsoft Project

Here I address the fundamental inability of MSP users – even supposed experts – to correctly analyze a logic-driven schedule.

While rooting around Planning Planet this morning, I stumbled across this link to an 8-month old blog entry from Ten Six Consulting: Monitoring Near Critical Tasks in Microsoft Project 2013 | Ten Six Consulting.  In light of my work on BPC Logic Filter, this was a subject of interest to me.  I started to reply on PP, but as my response grew I decided to transform it into an entry over here….

Overall I believe the article presents a perfect example of the fundamental inability of MSP users – even supposed experts – to correctly analyze a logic-driven schedule.  The primary reason for this is the user community’s reliance on Total Slack as the sole indicator of a given task’s “criticality” or its inclusion on a particular logical path – all while continuing to use constraints, deadlines, and variable calendars.

As usual, the article is a well written and nicely presented illustration of a fairly elementary concept, i.e. generating and applying a “Near Critical Filter” to show only tasks with Total Slack values between 0.1 and 10 days.  Ten Six then applied this filter to “clearly see all the tasks that are non-critical but in danger of becoming critical if they are delayed in any way.”  Here is the resulting chart (taken from their article) with the four “Near Critical” tasks highlighted.  The chart implicitly tells us that a Finish-No-Later-Than (2/22/15) constraint has been applied to the “Install Fence” task, reducing its Total Slack to 4 days.  Now the Fence and its only predecessor (Grade Site) are highlighted as Near-Critical.  (The TS=2 on the “Above Grade” summary task, also highlighted, seems to be a fluke of MSP’s screwy roll-up rule for TS; it reflects no logical relationship. [See Total Slack Calculation for Summary Tasks in Microsoft Project.])

Near-Critical-Tasks-in-Microsoft-ProjectFig-7

So, if the fence is delayed by 5 days, is the project’s completion delayed?  Clearly No; not according to this schedule.  The fence is not Near Critical for the project.  It merely has a constraint that may be violated (generating negative slack) if it slips too much.  Since it is a common practice to represent such commitments with late constraints or deadlines, this example is fairly typical of a situation that occurs routinely in complex schedules with multiple contract milestones.  It demonstrates why total slack is an unreliable indicator of the critical/near-critical path – i.e. the driving/near-driving path for project completion (or for anything else) –for all but the simplest projects.

There are some traditionalists in the scheduling profession who aim to preserve the sanctity of Total Slack (and Total Float in other tools) by prohibiting the use of any deadlines or late constraints in the schedule at all, regardless of contract commitments.  The same group should also prohibit the use of variable task calendars, resource calendars, and any kind of resource leveling, since these can also invalidate their interpretation of total slack.  I understand and empathize with this point of view – after all, without meaningful Total Slack (especially in MSP), the typical planner or analyst is reduced to hand-waving explanations when it comes to answering the tough questions.  I’ve been there.  Nevertheless, I also think alarm bells should ring and the schedule should bleed red whenever there is a forecast failure to meet a commitment.  I advocate for methods other than setting aside 30 years of software development.

I spent a few minutes duplicating Ten Six’s schedule in MSP 2010 – thankful that they seem to be using the same (standard) example for the two articles published eight months apart.  I think I got it close enough for illustrative purposes – with the main factors being a 4-day project work-week (M-Th), a 24-hour calendar on the first two milestones, and the aforementioned late constraint on the fence.  Then I used BPC Logic Filter to trace the logic for the “Project Complete” task.

Here’s the resulting chart.  It shows the driving path for project completion (i.e. the “Critical Path”) – at Relative Float of 0.  The CP includes all the tasks with TS=0 plus the two project milestones which, because of their different calendars, have a different Total Slack value.  The first “Near-Critical Path” is actually 12-days (not 4 days) away from driving the project completion, and it includes the “Grade Site” task with the (synthetically reduced) TS=4.  The “Install Fence” task, also with TS=4, is 24 days away from driving the project completion.

TMB Copy TenSixExample 20150130-20150821

I didn’t write BPC Logic Filter to overcome all the shortcomings of MSP; rather I wrote it to extract and present the logic-related information that is already there but which MSP does not show.  In this case – as in most – it tells a more complete story than Total Slack alone.