The Programme Critical Path screen is used to manage the critical path. A critical path sets out the necessary path or sequence that tasks will take from start to finish, taking into account the time needed for completion of the task and establishing meaningful links between them so that they are completed in a logical and efficient order. The Programme Critical Path screen displays the complete list of activities for a programme as well as the activity's duration and any predecessor items it may have. From this screen users can view the timeframe of the programme and in what order each activity will need to be completed.

Activities need to be assigned a duration before they can be used on the Programme Critical Path screen.

There are three key pieces of information that are required for each item in a programme to accurately plot the critical path:

Duration: How long should the activity take.
Predecessor: What has to have occurred for the activity to be due.
Programme Item Activity: How far along does the predecessor need to be for the task to become due.

Example

A bricklayer cannot start their task until the bricks have been delivered. Thus, the 'brick delivery' task MUST be a predecessor of the 'bricklaying' task.

The item activity can also be set to indicate whether tasks can be run concurrently, within a set period of each other, or if one must be completed before another commences.

Procedures

Compiling A Logistics Programme

Once the programme is complete and ready to be applied to jobs in the system, it will need to be compiled. Compilation means that the programme and its many components are locked into place and will be unavailable to be edited further. This allows for initial consistency across all programmes once they are assigned to jobs. Once a programme is applied to a job it can be altered depending on the preferences set.

Click Compile. The Compile Construction Logistics Programme confirmation prompt will be displayed.
Click Yes to compile the programme.