Infrastructure

Critical path method (CPM) scheduling needs to be revised for linear projects due to its inability to accurately represent the repetitive nature of activities, resource continuity, and work locations. However, Tactplan offers a solution by converting Gantt charts to a Line of Balance (Flowline), addressing these limitations and enabling seamless scheduling for linear construction in infrastructure work.

While CPM has been used on countless projects, it has yet to be found sufficient when scheduling linear tasks. Linear projects are those that have repetitive activities.

Infrastructure work such as road projects, tunnels, and pipelines are physically linear projects with repeated operations at each station. High-rise buildings have the same activities occurring on each floor.

The inability of CPM to accurately model the repetitive nature of linear construction includes the following:

• The arbitrary division of repetitive activities from location to location
• The inability to schedule the  continuity of resources
• The large number of activities necessary to represent a repetitive or linear project in a CPM schedule
• Activity rates of progress not indicated
• A CPM schedule not accurately reflecting actual conditions
• A CPM schedule does not provide any information on where the work is currently being performed on the project site.