Construction projects to be used as examples in course

[reuben]

I am preparing MS-Project exercices for a basic course.

Although I have taught MS-Project before, in this case the students will be
architects, civil engineers, and other people involved in construction
projects, like houses, buildings, bridges, street repairing, garden building,
interior revamping, and so.

Not being an expert in this field, I am looking for some realistic project
examples in this field, which could increase the interest of the audience.

I need examples of real projects, or projects from books, always in this
field; where I could see real task sequences, overallocation problems and so.
Data could also be modified as necessary, if required, for confidentiality.

I am more interested in the task precedence relations than in the actual
..mpp files, as I will adapt examples in any format for teaching purposes
and convert them to Project 2003 files. Realistic Gantt Charts would also do.

Can anybody help me by providing me with examples from books or real life,
or indicating me any books or web sites where I could download them?

Thanks in advance

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Look at the templates supplied with Project, there are two construction
examples.
HTH

 

[reuben]

Hi Jan:

Thank you very much for the info.
It is true that both templates provide info regarding the general activities
and sequences involved in construction projects. (Quite simple, all
dependencies are Start to Finish, and all the Resources are forex. External
Company, and so)

However they do not illustrate much the kind of typical problems somebody
planning or directing a real construction project would face. Problems will
be for example to level resources as much as possible during the project at
the individual level (to minimize contracting and dismissing people)

In the meantime I found some old books at the Engineering and Architecture
Faculties (from the 70s), which have examples of construction projects and
how they may be fine tuned (to shorten critical patt, to level resources,
etc). In the examples CPM method was used manually and then fine tuned
seeking these optimizations, but obviously MS-Project did not exist in those
times.

One possible approach I may use, is adapt some of these examples to
MS-Project use.

Of course if somebody already had some fine-tuned projects already in
MS-Project; (or even better the first drafts and the Project files after
fine-tuning them) it would be wonderful.

I did not see books, like Tim Pyrons.or Carl Chatfield's, showing more
modern construction examples.

Best Regards

 

[Steve House]

I teach several Project classes every month. One thing I believe very
strongly is in general one should not use "real world" projects as class
examples. The reason is that they are just too complex - for training
purposes a file should be simplified to the point that it clearly represents
the ONE issue of MS Project's behaviour that is under discussion at the
moment. You shouldn't get bogged down in how to organize a plan to build a
house, for example, but instead come up with examples that focus on the
behavious of Project under specific circumstances. For example, you can
discuss just about everything there is to know about Task Types and
Effort/Non-effort driven behaviour with an example file consisting of little
more than a single task and two resources.