Schedule Analyzer Logic league Overview

Logic League
Logic League
Resource Links
By Ron Winter Consulting LLC, Copyright 2003
+01 904-570-6157 or email at Ron@RonWinterConsulting.com

In P3 you can override a calculated start and finish date either manually or via built-in resource leveling. This adjustment will remain ‘permanent’ as long as you do not re-compute the CPM. Re-computing the CPM will erase all manual and resource-leveled changes to your schedule.

Resource leveled activities have constraints placed upon them that normal CPM calculations are not equipped to handle. Float is calculated by looking at the differences between early and late dates. These dates, in turn are computed using the CPM method. Even if they were to be considered, resource leveled date adjustments do not recognize the invisible constraints placed upon the network due to resource leveling.

What is needed is for the Scheduler to identify those activities that were delayed due to resource leveling and add in relationships between that activity and the activity with the resource that caused it to be delayed. Some people call this type of relationship a ‘soft relationship’ due to the fact that it does not represent a physical construction sequencing constraint but a ‘softer’ resource constraint. For clarity, we will label this type of relationship as a “Resource Link,”

Up until now, Schedulers have resisted adding resource links due to the problems of tracking and annotating their reasoning. Every time that a schedule update is made, the old resource links should be discarded before re-computing the CPM. After resource leveling, a whole new set of resource links need to be identified and added. Before Logic League, this process has been too time consuming and error prone.

With Logic League, discarding all past soft relationships is child’s play. Deactivate all relationships that are designated as ‘soft’ or deactivate all relationship with a relationship code designating the old procedure.

The other part of the procedure has been nearly impossible to do on any real-sized schedule; identify and add the soft relationships. We are going to show you exactly how easy this can be with Logic League. Below is a graphic summarizing the entire schedule update process.

Diagram showing the resource leveling update cycle.

This is an entire maintenance system; as quick and easy to run as it is to re-do on the next update. The resource links are as accurate and dependable as your resource leveling run because the entire thing is based upon that same run.