Customer Reviews

Cpm Construction Scheduler's Manual

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This book presents quite a surprise. It includes an introduction to construction network diagramming (predominantly activity-on-arrow method, not precedence diagramming), and then digresses on a tangent which includes a great wealth of information on general construction issues (fast-tracking, design-build, claims, contract issues, OSHA, shop drawings, daily field reports, company management, etc...), issues which were unexpected and somewhat irrelevant to the the specific subject at hand -- CPM scheduling. The examples and introduction to CPM techniques were somewhat cursory, and did not include the typical worksheets and detail for the reader to follow the critical path and float calculations.

My biggest gripe is that the book is focused on describing how to use a commercial spreadsheet program (Lotus or Quattro based) called "FASTPRO CPM Scheduler" which the book is based on ... a disk is included with the book that includes a Student version of the spreadsheet program. If you don't buy and use this specific software, roughly 1/3 of the book and the disk are useless to you. This is certainly not obvious to the reader from the title.

In summary, the book provides a surprising broad general reference for construction management methods, and a good reference for using the specific commercial software that it is based on. If you plan on using any other software (Primavera, MS Project), the book contains alot of program information which you will probably never use.