Discussion 7

* Discuss how resource scheduling ties to project priority.

Resource scheduling ties to project priority because resources are limited. The priority system ranks projects which then determine which project each resource should work on.

* Of the six reasons why scheduling resources is an important task, which is most important? Why?

1. Check if existing resources are adequate and available

2. Decide which resources have priority

3. Assess the impact if another project is added to the pool

4. Determine where the real critical path is. Are there unforeseen dependencies?

5. See what happens to the risk of being late if slack is used up developing a schedule

6. Decide if outside contractors have to be used

7. Decide if an imposed project duration is realistic

I believe that all the reason are important and work for one another. Being a Project Controller all reason are truly vital. You want to make sure that you have adequate and available funding before you start a project. If you start and funding is not available you’ve pretty much dug a hole for yourself and the company because in the end you will have to “eat” the cost. We have to process a pricing sheet for all tasks. On this pricing sheet it will list all labor categories and their rates; as well as list all the subcontractors that will be working on the task. This gives a general idea of the funding we will need for the task. Assessing the impact if another project is added to the pool has been considered when the initial steps were made in creating the task. We had an issue where we had hit our ceiling dollars so we had to look to other tasks to “round” up dollars, if you will. We expected the contract to go 5 years but in 3 years we had already used up the funding. This was due to adding new subs to the contract as well as consultants. The money was used quickly. After that issue was fixed we ran out of hours so we had to find hours from other...