Crash: an automated tool for schedule crashing

Abstract

According to Goal Group fast facts, nearly USD10 trillion was funneled to projects, in 2010. However in PricewaterhouseCoopers survey about Mega-Projects in the Arabian Gulf area, 80% of respondents said that their projects are delayed, wrote Ed Attwood from "ArabianBusiness.com". Crashing a schedule in project management is an important tool, especially in time and cost management. Traditional methods are time consuming, and prone to human error. This papers main objective is to present a developed automated tool model entitled "CRASH" that performs generic crashing of a schedule in a short period of time and without risk of errors. "CRASH" uses process decomposing and addresses the programmability of each operation. It is applied to schedule crashing problems and results show 90% to 95% reduction in time. This automated tool is relevant to the industry experts and academics, since it provides a new model that solves the problem of crashing in project schedules.