Critical Path Analysis

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Phil Taylor        Decision & Discrete Coursework                 April 2004

Maths Coursework – Decision & Discrete

Critical Path Analysis - Building An Extended Bedroom

My parents have decided to build an extension over our garage to add a fourth bedroom to the house as currently my two brothers are sharing a room and it has been decided that they are getting too old to share a room and need their own privacy. They want to know the minimum time to build and decorate the new bedroom and the minimum amount of people needed to complete the job. I am going to use critical path analysis to find these requirements out. Hopefully, my work will allow my parents to find out if how long this small extension will take to build and how many workers will need to be paid in order for the task to be completed successfully. The results that I will hopefully get will tell my parents how long the project will take and how many people will be needed to get the job done in the most efficient time.

First, I need to transform the problem into a mathematical model that I can solve to provide me with the information. I need to make a list of all the activities that need doing to complete the task and construct a precedence table to show the order in which the activities need to be completed. The activities to complete the job are

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  • Collect the building materials
  • Prepare the garage roof for building upon
  • Build the bedroom walls
  • Fit the bedroom window
  • Add the roof
  • Collect the interior furnishings
  • Fit the electrics
  • Plaster the walls
  • Lay down the carpet
  • Order the interior wallpaper and paint (which includes delivery time to the store and 1 hour for collection)
  • Paper the walls
  • Paint the ceiling
  • Construct the cupboards
  • Construct the wardrobes
  • Construct the bed
  • Add the furniture
  • Add the final features to the bedroom (curtains, television etc.)

Here is the table of activities which includes the duration of the ...

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