Alternative Buffer Sizing Approaches for CCPM_a Case Study in Palestine

Abstract

The implementation of project management methodologies is pivotal in achieving success in an increasingly complex and globally connected world. The widely used project scheduling method have been the Critical Path Method (CPM) until Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is introduced in 1997. Although CPM still dominates the scheduling approach in practice, CCPM is also continuously adopted to scheduling management of especially for resource constrained projects. On the other hand, finding the optimum buffer size introduced in CCPM approach is still a big challenge and studies on this area are still quite scarce. With this motivation, this thesis study is initiated to explore the adoption of CCPM principles to a resource-intensive mall project case in Palestine. Moreover, four different buffer sizing approaches proposed in the literature such as; Square Root of Sum of the Squares (SSQ), Adaptive Procedure with Density (APD), Adaptive Procedure with Resource Tightness (APRT) and Relative dispersion (RD) are studied and their performance are compared for their applicability for the selected case. The results revealed that the best option for project buffer size is obtained by applying APD Method; the duration to complete the project is computed as 555 which is 114 days (17%) less than CPM approach (with leveled resources). The study and the findings, underscores the importance of adopting appropriate buffer size considering the project characteristics in order to improve CCPM practices.