Practical Project Scheduling

Course Overview

Practical Project Scheduling is a hands-on course designed to equip participants with the practical skills required to develop, implement, monitor, and control project schedules. The course emphasizes learning by doing, enabling participants to translate project activities into realistic timelines, establish dependencies, allocate resources, develop Gantt charts, identify critical activities, monitor progress, and manage schedule delays. Participants will work through practical exercises and project-based scenarios using tools such as Microsoft Excel and other commonly used scheduling techniques.

Target Participants

  • Project managers and project officers
  • Project supervisors and team leaders
  • Project coordinators
  • Operations managers and supervisors
  • Construction and engineering professionals
  • Programme and portfolio officers
  • Business and departmental managers
  • Monitoring and evaluation officers
  • Professionals involved in project implementation
  • Consultants and project management practitioners
  • Entrepreneurs managing projects
  • Professionals seeking practical project scheduling skills

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

  • Understand the practical principles of project scheduling.
  • Convert project scope and deliverables into manageable activities.
  • Develop a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).
  • Identify, define, and sequence project activities.
  • Establish activity dependencies and relationships.
  • Estimate realistic activity durations.
  • Develop practical project schedules from project information.
  • Create and interpret Gantt charts.
  • Develop project milestones and schedule baselines.
  • Identify the critical path and critical activities.
  • Calculate and interpret activity float.
  • Allocate project resources to scheduled activities.
  • Develop resource-based schedules.
  • Monitor planned versus actual project progress.
  • Identify schedule variances and project delays.
  • Apply practical techniques for recovering delayed schedules.
  • Update and maintain project schedules throughout implementation.
  • Use Microsoft Excel to develop and track project schedules.
  • Prepare practical schedule reports for project teams and management.
  • Apply scheduling techniques to real-world project scenarios.

Course Outline

Module 1: Fundamentals of Practical Project Scheduling

  • Meaning and purpose of project scheduling
  • Importance of scheduling in project implementation
  • Project planning versus scheduling
  • Components of a project schedule
  • Role of the project team in scheduling
  • Common scheduling problems
  • Practical scheduling exercise

Module 2: Defining Project Activities

  • Understanding project scope
  • Identifying project deliverables
  • Developing a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
  • Breaking work packages into activities
  • Activity descriptions
  • Activity coding
  • Creating an activity list
  • Practical activity identification exercise

Module 3: Activity Sequencing and Dependencies

  • Principles of activity sequencing
  • Predecessors and successors
  • Types of activity dependencies
  • Finish-to-start relationships
  • Start-to-start relationships
  • Finish-to-finish relationships
  • Start-to-finish relationships
  • Leads and lags
  • Developing an activity network
  • Practical sequencing exercise

Module 4: Estimating Activity Duration

  • Principles of duration estimation
  • Time estimation techniques
  • Historical information
  • Expert judgment
  • Three-point estimation
  • Optimistic, most likely and pessimistic estimates
  • Working calendars
  • Working days versus calendar days
  • Practical duration estimation exercise

Module 5: Developing a Project Schedule

  • Schedule development process
  • Setting project start and completion dates
  • Scheduling activities
  • Establishing milestones
  • Developing project calendars
  • Setting schedule baselines
  • Gantt chart development
  • Practical project schedule development

Module 6: Critical Path and Network Scheduling

  • Understanding network schedules
  • Critical path method
  • Critical and non-critical activities
  • Forward pass
  • Backward pass
  • Early start and early finish
  • Late start and late finish
  • Total float
  • Free float
  • Identifying critical activities
  • Practical critical path exercise

Module 7: Resource Scheduling

  • Identifying project resources
  • Labour scheduling
  • Equipment scheduling
  • Materials scheduling
  • Resource allocation
  • Resource constraints
  • Resource leveling
  • Managing resource conflicts
  • Practical resource allocation exercise

Module 8: Developing Gantt Charts Using Microsoft Excel

  • Setting up a project schedule in Excel
  • Creating activity tables
  • Entering start and finish dates
  • Calculating activity duration
  • Creating Gantt charts
  • Adding milestones
  • Tracking planned and actual dates
  • Formatting schedules for professional reporting
  • Practical Excel Gantt chart exercise

Module 9: Monitoring and Updating Project Schedules

  • Establishing the baseline
  • Tracking project progress
  • Planned versus actual progress
  • Updating activity status
  • Monitoring milestones
  • Identifying schedule variance
  • Progress percentage calculations
  • Schedule performance indicators
  • Practical schedule monitoring exercise

Module 10: Managing Delays and Schedule Changes

  • Causes of project delays
  • Identifying schedule slippage
  • Delay analysis
  • Managing schedule changes
  • Re-sequencing activities
  • Adding resources
  • Crashing
  • Fast-tracking
  • Schedule recovery planning
  • Practical delay recovery exercise

Module 11: Project Schedule Reporting

  • Daily and weekly schedules
  • Monthly project schedules
  • Schedule status reports
  • Progress reporting
  • Milestone reports
  • Schedule variance reports
  • Schedule dashboards 

Course Schedules:

Dates Fees Location Apply