CRASH: AN AUTOMATED TOOL FOR SCHEDULE CRASHING Najib Georges 1 , Nabil Semaan 2 , and Joe Rizk 3 Abstract: According to Goal Group fast facts, nearly USD10 trillion was funneled to projects, in 2010. However in PricewaterhouseCoopers survey about Mega-Projects in the Arabian Gulf area, 80% of respondents said that their projects are delayed, wrote Ed Attwood from “ArabianBusiness.com”. Crashing a schedule in project management is an important tool, especially in time and cost management. Traditional methods are time consuming, and prone to human error. This paper’s main objective is to present a developed automated tool model entitled “CRASH” that performs generic crashing of a schedule in a short period of time and without risk of errors. “CRASH” uses process decomposing and addresses the programmability of each operation. It is applied to schedule crashing problems and results show 90% to 95% reduction in time. This automated tool is relevant to the industry experts and academics, since it provides a new model that solves the problem of crashing in project schedules. Keywords: Schedule Crashing, Cost Reduction; Critical Path Method. 1. INTRODUCTION Goal Group stated in their fast facts that nearly USD10 trillion was funneled to projects, in 2010. Projects, run by one or many project managers, need to have a definite scope, budget, and time schedule. On the words of Sayles, “Project managers function as bandleaders who pull together their players each a specialist with individual score and internal rhythm. Under the leader's direction, they all respond to the same beat” (Sayles, 2011). Bringing to action those specialists necessitates preparing a “plan of work”. In the planning phase, the project manager defines elements of work, commonly referred to as tasks or activities, having defined duration and relationships. Subsequently, he assembles these activities in an implementation structure, called schedule. This schedule serves as the baseline to estimate the total project duration, assign resources, and track and control the work progress. A common method for scheduling is the critical path method (CPM). This method combines different activities according to their precedence relationships and dependencies. Each activity has predecessors and successors, along with different dependencies like Finish to Start, Start to Start and Finish to Finish with lead or lag time for each. The total project International Journal of Science, Environment ISSN 2278-3687 (O) and Technology, Vol. 3, No 2, 2014, 374 – 394 1 Associate Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Balamand, Koura District, Lebanon 2 Assitant Professor, 3 Senior Lecturer, Received Jan 20, 2014 * Published April 2, 2014 * www.ijset.net