CPM AND PERT (Program evaluation and review technique)

An Economy is the most important factor and is next only to safety in civil construction projects. As efficiency for mechanical equipment, reliability for an electrical circuit, weight for the aircraft industry is the objective function, an economy is an objective function for civil engineering projects which involve a large investment. Even a little percentage of saving will yield substantial monetary gain.

The project cost is made up of two components-material costs and construction costs. The minimum cost on materials is achieved by providing an optimum structural dimension to the various components of the project which can be obtained by employing mathematical programming methods available in the Operation Research Management/Optimization Techniques. With the advent of modern computers, providing efficient solutions to very complex problems of optimization has become increasingly easy and simple. But the minimum cost of material consumption alone does not minimize the cost of the projects, as the construction cost is also a vital component that cannot be ignored.

While dealing with the construction aspect, a construction engineer has to deal with ‘men’, ‘materials’, ‘machinery’ and ‘money’ which are termed as RESOURCES. So the most economical consumption of the resources available at the disposal in the least possible time is the objective function of project construction management. To derive this objective function, certain numerical techniques are available which are known as CPM (Critical Path Method) and PERT (Project/Programme Evaluation and Review Technique).

1. Project Management
2. Network Diagram
3. PERT
4. CPM
5. Crashing
6. Updating and Resource Allocation
7. Engineering Economy