What is Critical Path?

What is Critical Path?
The Critical Path identifies the critical and most important tasks in a schedule that impact the completion date of the project.  These critical tasks are the most important because if any of these tasks on the Critical Path are delayed, it will automatically delay the completion date of the project.

Let’s turn on Critical Path as an example.

As you can see the Critical Path has been highlighted in red, but tasks that aren’t critical are not highlighted.

These tasks along the critical path have a direct impact to the completion date of the project, so if any tasks along the critical path are delayed they will delay the completion date of the project.

Our schedule is broken down into 2 different areas, Exterior Work & Interior Work.

As you can the Exterior work on the project does not have a direct impact on the completion date of the schedule because we have a separate crew doing the Exterior work, while we have another crew starting the interior work.

But what if we didn’t have separate crews and had to wait to do the interior work until after the exterior work was completed.

So let’s drag the Interior work after landscaping and let’s say that demolition can’t start until we have our landscaping completed, so let’s make the connection here, okay

Now you can see basically everything on the schedule, both the exterior work & interior work is now critical to the completion date of the project.

But you will notice rough plumbing & the Bathroom tiling is not highlighted on the critical path.  So the reason is the bathroom work is isolated from the rest of the schedule, so the countertops, appliances & hardwood floors & carpeting don’t depend on the Bathroom tiling being completed, so therefore it is not critical that the Bathroom tile gets completed on time, because it will not impact the final completion date of the project.

So that’s a quick overview of Critical Path and how it can be used to identify the most important tasks on your project schedule so you can complete your rehab projects on time and on budget.