Resource allocation

Resource Any consumable, required to accomplish an activity, such as labor,

materials, equipment, machinery, tools and shop space are the resources for the project. Resource requirements are estimated at the activity level based on project/activity documentation and achieved productivity or production rated under the stated environmental and managerial conditions. More than one resource needed is to be estimated. These resources may be constant over an activitys duration or may be variable in intensity. Having estimated the resources needed for the activities considered, and based on the CPM diagram already developed, the project team will develop a schedule with no resource constraints. Project resources all have certain characteristics that depend upon the following factors:

Stock ability Required/ Availability resource intensity Constant Intensity (Uniform Requirement) Non uniform Intensity (Non uniform requirement) Resource Complexity Budget constraint Critical path or critical activities

Resource Aggregation
Resource aggregation is a method of calculating needed resources at the project or multi project level for each time unit to enable implementation of the plan. During this process, no limitation on available resources is considered. Most CPM oriented software on the market is capable of performing aggregation or finding daily (time unit) project requirements for all resources estimated as needed to implement the plan.

Resource Allocation
Resource allocation is the distribution of available resources to different activities on different dates and in different quantities. It is usual in planning a project; a planner has to consider not only the activity precedence relationships but also the availability of the resources. While allocating resources, the planner tries to distribute (allocate) the resources from critical activities to noncritical activities so that important activities (having no floats) can be continued without affecting the project completion date.

Resource Leveling
Resource Leveling is the method of scheduling activities within their available float so as to minimize fluctuations in day- to- day resource requirements. By resource leveling, we try to optimize the use of resources required to complete a project. Resource leveling helps in obtaining uniformity (so far as possible) in resource requirement throughout the life of a project. The benefit of resource leveling is to ease resource management so that cost involved in managing resources can be minimized.