RESOURCE PLANNING, SCHEDULING AND LEVELLING

By: The Civil Engineer on 20:12

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For actual implementation of project different resources are required. They include men, machines, money, and also space without which the implementation of any project cannot commence. Men resource includes labours, planners, designers, supervisory staff, etc. Machinery includes different kinds of equipment for various activities. Out of all above except the money and material all other can be used repetitively.

            However, most of the times many activities run concurrently with each other and in such cases it may be possible that the total resources needed for completing the work may not be available. So the available resources will have to be used in such a manner that it satisfies the above constraint. It may also be possible that at the planning stage if particular attention is not paid to the availability of resources the needed resources at some level of the project may exceed the demand, which is not desirable. It is therefore, necessary that the alternative ways of using the available resources be decided so that they are allocated at different levels and stages of the project wherever required. This will lead to obtain the best outcome and profit from all the resources.

Resource Planning and Scheduling:

            The resources, especially in case of manpower, are limited and it is necessary that the person in charge of execution or the manager to prepare a resource analysis report which may enable him to put to best use the manpower resource at his hand. There are peaks and valleys in the form of required resources in any project and it has to be tried that these peaks and valleys are to be leveled with the help of resource report. e.g: mason or carpenter in civil engineering project or unskilled labour over the complete period has to be known.

            The manager has a definite availability of the resources and he has to plan the requirement of the resource over the different period of execution of the project. He has therefore the following information and alternative:

1.      The total requirement of resource for the project over its duration as given by histogram.

2.      If the available resources are insufficient this will result in delay in completion of the project. He has to decide the best allocation of available resources over the entire period of project so that the completion period of the project is extended by minimum duration.

3.      If the project has to be completed in a fixed period how best can be the available resources to be utilized to achieve the goal.

In the above situation it is necessary to have proper resource scheduling to any one of the following objective

1. If project duration is fixed, to level or smoothen the resource demand in such a manner that peak and valleys in the demand are avoided as far as possible by suitably spacing in different activities and uniform amount / quantity of the resource is made available. Thus the required uniform resource in the form of manpower or any other is made available. It is presumed that unlimited resources are available. This is resource aggregation.
2. If the availability of the resources is fixed the same should be so judiciously used so as to complete the project in minimum possible duration. This is resources allocation and is necessary when a particular type of resource is in scarcity or is limited.  

Resource Leveling:

            In resource leveling there is limited availability of resource. However, normally the available resources should not be less than the maximum number or quantity required for any activity of the project. Therefore the activity requiring a maximum resource dictates the method and along with execution of such activity whichever concurrent activity would be executed, they will be utilizing limited resources. Since the requirement of skill labor is more and the availability is less the rescheduling will have to be effected. In this rescheduling it will be tried to shift first the non critical activities suitably utilizing the available float. However, even with such shifting the demand for such resources may be exceed with availability and in this case even the critical activity also cannot be completed in their duration and hence the duration will have to be increased to suit the availability of the resources. This is therefore; result in increase in the duration of the project. But the available resources being the constraint on the project there is no other way than to accept this delay in completion of project. As such where the completion date is not to be conformed strictly or where there is not likely to the major loss because of some delay in completion of the project and there is availability of limited resources, resource leveling will have to be adopted.

            Resource leveling is also a process of trial and mathematical complexity is involved in complex projects having many activities. No technique have been involved as yet to give a optimum solution to such resource leveling problem in straight forward solution can not be obtained. It is only by trial one can come to a conclusion to the problem of resource leveling. Mathematically it is not possible to arrive at a unique solution of minimizing the maximum resources for the project. Manager’s experience in such problems will only help in bringing out and acceptable and practicable solution for resource leveling.  

            Generally, there are two approaches to leveling and smoothing the resources required:

·         Time-limited resource considerations
In this case emphasis will be placed on completing the project within a specified time. This time will usually have been determined by network analysis. Adjustments in the timing of any activity, and the resources required at a given time, must be undertaken within the float (slack) available. Obviously there can be no adjustment of activities which are on the critical path.

·         Resource-limited resource considerations
In this case the project must be completed with the resources available even if this means extending the project duration. If the total resource demand exceeds the resource availability at any time then some of the activities must be delayed until there is sufficient resource availability.