Latest Water Technologies of Abengoa Water - GineersNow GineersNow Engineering Magazine Issue No. 022, Abe | Page 40

How Critical is the Critical Path Method
in Engineering Project Management?
By using CPM in a project, engineers can get the following advantages.
Every engineering course has a subject called
the Engineering Project Management. This
discusses the principles of initiating, planning,
executing, controlling, and closing the work
of a team to achieve specific goals and meet
specific success criteria.
In this subject, there is an important lesson and
technique that engineering students should
learn by heart so they could apply later at work,
especially in complex projects. It is called the
critical path method or CPM.
CPM is performed by constructing project
network diagrams or precedence diagrams, as
well as a Gantt chart. This horizontal bar chart
provides a graphical illustration of a schedule
that helps to plan, coordinate, and track
specific tasks in a project. Gantt chart is also
used to check about the status of the project.
But what exactly is CPM? Organization of large and complex
projects
CPM is a step-by-step project management
technique for process planning that defines
critical and non-critical tasks with the goal of
preventing time-frame problems and process
bottlenecks. It is ideally suited to projects
consisting of numerous activities that interact in
a complex manner. Because each task in an engineering project
is listed, CPM allows engineers to have a
more systematic approach in project planning
and scheduling, project execution, and risk
management. It helps especially when there are
several tasks done altogether.
By using CPM in a project, engineers can get
the following advantages:
Visibility of the progress of project
activities
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To see the project being accomplished in its
physical form is one thing, but crossing out
tasks in the CPM is another.
Water Leaders • June 2017
Possibility to reduce the project
duration
In project management, when the project is
finished faster than planned without comprising
quality, of course, the better. This can be done
with the help of CPM by using compression