Proposal For Overlapping Activities

1 Proposal for Overlapping Activities
The Project Engineer of CCB has suggested overlapping activities on the critical path would be a better
solution for the acceleration. When activities are overlapped with each other duration can be reduced
however there are many factors that will dictate such effective acceleration. They are,
 Duration of the surrounded activities and the particular activity.

 Number of completion requirements to the commencement have to be concerned.
 The activity is in critical path or not.
As a overall proposal in this scenario, reducing the duration rather than overlapping would be the best
as for overlapping more resource planning is required. Further the relationships between the activities
of the project make the overlapping difficult.
Moreover, overlapping activities only on the critical path will not change the overall duration as the
Activity N will influence the Activity Q. Therefore, to reduce the duration, not only activities on the
critical path but activities on the non-critical path will also have to be changed.
1.1 Total Float of Activities
The excel Table
Total float is the amount of time a task can move without impacting the final project delivery date. As
per the definition and since the project needs a two-week reduction, the activities which are less than or
equal to two must have to be considered. As seen in the table above apart from all the critical activities
and activity C,D,E which are already finished special consideration must be given to activity K and N.
1.2 Activities on the critical path

A, B, H, M, Q are the activities on the critical path. In addition, there is a lag of 2 weeks between H and
M and lag of one week between M and Q. It can be assumed that those lags cannot be eliminated
completely due to their technical constraints. Activity A is already finished, and Activity B is in
progress. Therefore, Activity B’s remaining three weeks will be difficult to overlap with Activity H’s
total two weeks. As for overlapping the number of resources and planning procedures should be
optimal.
Nevertheless, an assumption can be made that the lag duration of 3 between M and Q can be reduced
by one week by adding a lead. Originally, in the four weeks of M it will need a waiting of three weeks
to start Q, but with planning the work done in the first week of M will already have three weeks of
waiting time due to the remaining three weeks of the Activity M. Therefore, one week can be
overlapped by that. However, as the Activity H only has 2 weeks, this assumption would be riskier for
the lag of two weeks between H and M to be reduced by one. Further two weeks from M & Q cannot
be overlapped as there are the last activities, impact from a failure is high. Therefore, considering all
these the candidate activities suitable for overlapping can be identified in the descending order as
 M & Q by one week

 B & H by one week
 H & M by one week
 M & Q by two weeks
Therefore, the best option would be to reduce one week from M & Q and one week from B & H.
1.3 Non-critical Activities

Even those strategies are implemented, the duration will not be reduced by two weeks because of the
influence by activity N. Further to retain the critical path, the resultant coming from the activity N
should be 17 or less to accommodate the 18 coming from Activity M.
Thus, two weeks should be reduced. The candidate activities to overlap to influence N is:
 Two weeks overlap between N & Q

 One week Overlap between K & N and Two week overlap between G & N
From these two options, the second option must deal with an overlap of three weeks. Henceforth the
overlap of two weeks in one option would be the weeks of 17,18 where the lag of two weeks are
happening according to the overlap in critical path activities. Therefore, although the second option is
closer to the end of the project that option seems to be the most viable.
Both of those activities would not be effective as the Activity K will be influenced by Activity M.
Leading to increase activities in the critical path as shown as in the following diagram.
This could be a problematic in managing and supervising all these activities. To mitigate that the best
option would be to add a lead between the two activities of K and M.
1.4 Overall activities to be overlapped

In conclusion, activities to be overlapped are:
 One week of H and B

 One week of M and Q
 Two weeks of N and Q
 One week of K & M
This will retain the critical path and effectively reduce the duration by two weeks.

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1 Proposal for Overlapping Activities

 Duration of the surrounded activities and the particular activity.

1.1 Total Float of Activities

The excel Table

1.2 Activities on the critical path

 M & Q by one week

1.3 Non-critical Activities

 Two weeks overlap between N & Q

1.4 Overall activities to be overlapped

 One week of H and B

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