Before starting any project activity, overall project schedule has to be filized and approved by the competent authority. The overall schedule comprises of activities such as basic engineering, detailed engineering, tendering, ordering, procurement, inspection, construction, piping, hydro-testing, electrical and instrumentation etc up to the commissioning of the project. Major activities are then broken down to smaller parts (work break down structure) to ease of planning, resource allocation, monitoring and reviewing process and highlighting the problems/ hold-ups (if any) from time to time for taking corrective measures to expedited completion of the project. Every project has to have a scheduled start date, actual start date, scheduled completion date and expected completion date. Frequent monitoring and reviewing the activities, the project mager would be able to forecast a fil date for completion of the project. There are software tools available like PERT/CPM, Primavera (most versatile tool use across the world to control project activities) and lastly Bar Chart Schedule (simple and can be understood by everyone) for these purposes.
