PLANNING AND SCHEDULING OF A PROJECT USING MICROSOFT PROJECT (MSP).

Shubham Laddha 1 , Prerna Chanda 1 and Sneha Khedekar 2 . 1. Student (BE Civil, AISSMS COE, Pune, India). 2. Assistant Professor (AISSMS COE, Pune, India). ...................................................................................................................... Manuscript Info Abstract ......................... ........................................................................ Manuscript History

In spite of all that is known about project management best practices, they are often absent from typical construction projects in India. Our experience is such that weak project management practices continue to be a common place in construction industry, particularly in developing countries. Poorly managed projects cost all stakeholders a huge amount not just financially but also psychologically and emotionally. It has motivated us to carry out the working and functioning of a project using the modern project management tool available in the market; and then comparing it with the traditional software (Excel) which is being use. We carried on an online survey focusing on all the stakeholders related to the project with a view to obtain an idea of various project management practices in construction industry. Notably, 80% of the total construction industries in India still use traditional software Microsoft Excel for planning, scheduling and controlling of their projects and 86% felt the need for adapting to new software. We then approached a Pune based construction company in which Excel is still the dominant source of managing the projects. We expressed them our visions and desire to work on one of their projects using Microsoft Project. We carried on the planning & scheduling of the building using Microsoft Project tool. The results obtained were considerably positive than those using traditional software.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Introduction:-
"Project is a unique process consisting of a set of coordinated and controlled activities with start and finish dates, undertaken to achieve an objective conforming to specific requirements including constraints of time, cost and resources." (ISO 10006:2003 -Quality Management Systems -Guidelines for Quality Management in Projects 8) Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
In other words, Project Management is the Application of knowledge, skills and Techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. It is a strategic ability to do something successfully for organizations, enabling them to patch the project results to Organizational goals and thus, better compete in their markets.

162
It can be also defined as the process and activity of planning, organizing, inspiring, and controlling resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals in scientific or daily problems.

About Microsoft Project:-
Microsoft Project is a project management software product, developed and sold by Microsoft. It is designed to assist a project manager in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads.
Project creates budgets based on assignment work and resource rates. As resources are assigned to tasks and assignment work estimated, the program calculates the cost, equal to the work times the rate, which rolls up to the task level and then to any summary tasks and finally to the project level. Resource definitions (people, equipment and materials) can be shared between projects using a shared resource pool. Each resource can have its own calendar, which defines what days and shifts a resource is available. Resource rates are used to calculate resource assignment costs which are rolled up and summarized at the resource level. Each resource can be assigned to multiple tasks in multiple plans and each task can be assigned multiple resources, and the application schedules task work based on the resource availability as defined in the resource calendars. All resources can be defined in label without limit. Therefore, it cannot determine how many finished products can be produced with a given amount of raw materials. This makes Microsoft Project unsuitable for solving problems of available materials constrained production. Additional software is necessary to manage a complex facility that produces physical goods.

163
The application creates critical path schedules, and critical chain and event chain methodology third-party add-ons also are available. Schedules can be resource leveled, and chains are visualized in a Gantt chart. Additionally, Microsoft Project can recognize different classes of users. These different classes of users can have differing access levels to projects, views, and other data. Custom objects such as calendars, views, tables, filters, and fields are stored in an enterprise global which is shared by all users.

164
The survey was carried out using a google form which was circulated through various mediums like emails & WhatsApp.
As mentioned in the description any individual related to construction field ranging from engineers, consultant, contractor, architects, managers etc. could fill the survey.  One has to manually enter all durations and dates while double checking that not of these tasks were scheduled over a weekend or holiday.  Besides many mistakes are made while planning in excel and these mistakes cannot be rectified or spotted easily.  If one uses Excel to manage his/her project and something goes wrong he/she will have no idea what the residual effects of that change on the entire project are.  By using Microsoft project, when things change in your schedule you will be able to update your schedule and it will instantly display all affected dates. This will enable the project manager to make better informed decisions as to what corrective action to take and thus have a more effective and up to date project schedule.  The main purpose of this research is to only indicate the ease of doing of work because of use of better software which are easy to operate, and results obtained are much better than traditional software like Excel.

Research Objective:-
Basically this thesis will conduct an exploratory study on implementation of Microsoft Project software in every aspect of a project which comprise of Planning and Scheduling stage followed by the Monitoring and Controlling. In this regards, in term of construction management, this dissertation is written for the objectives listed below:  To study the scheduling techniques to prepare network.  Planning and scheduling of residential building.  To prepare a realistic schedule and set baseline.  To reduce the total duration then the actual executed project's duration (Case Study).  Ease of work for the Labor.

Provision of Calendar:-
Calendar enables us to assign proper dates for holidays, ease of labour, procurement of resources and carrying out the proper planning and scheduling.

Reduction in the overall Cost of the Project:-
Proper analysis of the Resources and allocating them without being over allocated is possible using Microsoft Project. By using the fewer Resources where slack time is enough available helps to reduce the cost of the project by 2% of overall cost of the Traditional way of Management. Besides when the project is completed before time, the overhead charges also reduce contributing to reduction of total cost of project.

Conclusion:-
Construction of building using Traditional way proves to be uneconomical and consumes more time with many complexity and enormous error which actual execution of the Project. Traditional way of planning doesn't sub divide the main task which future gets the hurdle of over allocation of resources, improper judgment of resources for particular activities etc. Microsoft Project is the modern tool of Project Management that aid to overcome the obstacles faced owing to traditional way of Planning and Management. It helps for the optimum and effective organization of activities which helps to give the vision to complete the project in planned duration and within the Economy.