The Temporary Room Sets the Date: Sequencing a Cleanroom Project Until Its 45-Week Critical Path Appears
Student Name
American College of Education
HLTH5683: Project Management for Healthcare Administrators
Module 3 Assignment
Instructor Name
September 18, 2028
From Work Packages to Activities
The work breakdown in the previous module divided the composite hospital's sterile compounding suite into 45 work packages. For scheduling, the team grouped them into 28 activities, combining packages that are always done in sequence by the same crew, such as new walls, ceiling and floors. Each activity's duration was estimated by the person responsible for it, in weeks, with the basis written down: the design firm for design, the building department's published review times for the permit, the vendors' quoted lead times for equipment and the contractor for construction. Dependencies were set as finish-to-start relationships unless the work could clearly overlap.
The critical path method, first described by Kelley and Walker (1959), calculates for each activity the earliest it can start and finish, working forward from the start, and the latest it can start and finish without delaying the project, working backward from the end. The difference is float. Activities with zero float form the critical path: any delay to them delays the finish. A schedule without a critical path tells everyone when things should happen; a schedule with one tells the project manager which delays matter.
The Network
Starting from charter approval on September 15, 2028, the design chain runs through a site survey of two weeks, schematic design of four weeks, a one-week design review with the certifier, building official and fire marshal, construction documents of six weeks and a building permit review of seven weeks, which ends in early February. Three chains branch from the design review. The dedicated air handling unit can be ordered once the design review fixes its specification; its quoted lead time is 14 weeks. Procedures can be drafted over eight weeks, followed by six weeks of classroom training. And the primary engineering controls can be ordered once construction documents are complete, with a ten-week lead time.
The temporary cleanroom chain starts after schematic design: ten weeks to procure the modular unit, two weeks to install it once the infection control risk assessment is complete, two weeks to certify it and one week to move compounding into it. Demolition in the pharmacy can begin only when both the permit is issued and compounding has moved out. Construction then runs through demolition of two weeks, walls, ceiling and floors of eight weeks and doors, pass-through, sink and finishes of four weeks, while ductwork of six weeks and installation of the air handling unit of two weeks proceed in parallel. Controls and pressure monitoring take two weeks, air balancing two, certification two, followed in parallel by environmental sampling and hands-on competency assessment in the new suite, each two weeks, and a final two weeks of stocking and a dry run.
The Critical Path
The forward pass gives a finish at week 45, July 27, 2029, five days before the charter's target of August 1. The backward pass identifies the critical path: charter approval, site survey, schematic design, procurement, installation and certification of the temporary cleanroom, the move into it, demolition, walls, ceiling and floors, doors and finishes, controls, air balancing, certification, then environmental sampling and competency assessment together and the final dry run. Every activity on that chain has zero float.
The team had assumed the permit would drive the date. It does not, by one week. The design and permit chain finishes in week 20, while the temporary cleanroom is ready for compounding only in week 21, so demolition waits for the temporary room, not for the permit. The air handling unit, the risk everyone worried about, has 12 weeks of float if ordered after the design review. The primary engineering controls have 13 weeks and training 20. Ductwork and air handling installation run four weeks ahead of the walls they must meet.
Decisions the Critical Path Changes
The finding changes three decisions. First, the temporary cleanroom should be ordered as soon as the site survey confirms where it will go, four weeks earlier than planned, rather than waiting for schematic design. Rerunning the schedule with that change moves the temporary room off the critical path and makes the permit the driver, with the finish moving one week earlier to week 44. Second, the air handling unit should be ordered immediately after the design review, not after construction documents. If the order waited for final documents in week 13, the unit would arrive in week 27, only two weeks before it is needed, and its 12 weeks of float would shrink to two. Third, training can start later without any effect on the date, which lets pharmacy staff complete it closer to opening, when it will be fresher.
The analysis also shows what does not need attention. Several stakeholders had asked for the primary engineering controls to be ordered early; with 13 weeks of float, there is no schedule reason to spend the money sooner.
Options If the Date Slips
The schedule also needs a plan for recovery, decided before it is needed. The Project Management Institute (2021) describes two common ways to shorten a schedule: crashing, which adds resources to critical activities at extra cost, and fast tracking, which overlaps activities that would normally run in sequence, at the price of more risk and possible rework. The team identified one of each on the critical path. The contractor can add a second crew to walls, ceiling and floors, cutting that activity from eight weeks to six for about $38,000 in overtime and additional labor. And controls and pressure monitoring can begin on the ductwork side of the suite while the last finishes are completed, saving about one week, with the risk that finishing work damages sensors already installed.
Neither option will be used unless the critical path loses more than the two-week buffer. Both are recorded now, with their costs and risks, so that a decision in June does not have to start from nothing. Options off the critical path, such as speeding up equipment deliveries, would cost money without moving the date and are excluded from the recovery plan.
Protecting the Schedule
A single-point schedule is only as good as its estimates, and large projects are notoriously optimistic. Flyvbjerg (2014), reviewing evidence on major projects, argued that cost overruns and delays are the rule rather than the exception and that planners' optimism and misjudgment of risk are major causes. This project is not large, but its estimates came from the same kind of people. The team therefore asked each owner of a critical activity for a pessimistic duration. The three largest gaps were air balancing, which can take several rounds if pressures do not hold, walls and finishes, which depend on the contractor's crew availability, and the temporary cleanroom's certification.
The project manager will hold two weeks of schedule buffer between the dry run and the August 1 opening, report float on the critical and near-critical paths every two weeks and treat any loss of float on the permit chain as critical once the temporary room is ordered early. The critical path is not fixed at the start; it moves whenever an activity uses its float, and the project manager's job is to notice.
References
Flyvbjerg, B. (2014). What you should know about megaprojects and why: An overview. Project Management Journal, 45(2), 6-19. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.21409
Kelley, J. E., Jr., & Walker, M. R. (1959). Critical-path planning and scheduling. In Papers presented at the December 1-3, 1959, eastern joint IRE-AIEE-ACM computer conference (pp. 160-173). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/1460299.1460318
Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.
How this HLTH 5683 Module 3 example is structured
HLTH 5683 Module 3 in many sections sequences activities until a critical path becomes visible; your classroom's instructions decide whether you must include a network diagram or Gantt chart. This example explains how durations and dependencies were set, then reports the results of the forward and backward passes with the critical path and the float on each near-critical chain. The heart of the paper is interpretation: what the critical path reveals, which decisions it changes and how the schedule will be protected.
HLTH5683 Module 3 questions, answered
What does HLTH5683 Module 3 usually ask for?
HLTH5683 Module 3 in many sections asks students to sequence project activities with durations and dependencies and identify the critical path, often with a network diagram or Gantt chart. Your classroom's instructions decide the tool and level of detail.
How do I find the critical path?
Work forward from the start to find each activity's earliest start and finish, then backward from the end to find its latest start and finish. Activities where earliest and latest are the same have zero float and form the critical path.
Why report float on non-critical activities?
Activities with little float can become critical after a small delay, and activities with a lot of float can be scheduled flexibly. Knowing float helps a project manager decide where to watch closely and where there is room.
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