Over the years, many of you emailed asking for a CPM Tutor you can use in the trailer or classroom. Thanks for keeping after me with your requests!
I am pleased to announce the CPM Tutor is now available through McGraw-Hill Education and Amazon in hardcover and for Kindle. Get it here!.
Now that I have retired after 35 years of service to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, I can finally tell everyone who is behind the CPM Tutor! My name is Bill East and here's my LinkedIn resume. Find out what I am doing now at my new company Prairie Sky Consulting and follow me on Twitter @cornhenge.
I would like to thank Mr. Jose Sanchez for his email feedback from October 2010: "I came across your site as part of a search, while looking for scheduling information on the internet; I am always looking for a better way to do my job. I do construction scheduling for general contractors wanting to outsource their scheduling needs, and also teach a construction scheduling class at a local community college. I want to compliment you on the incredible job you have performed in producing the tutorial. I teach from personal notes, field experience and several scheduling books; however, your guide is beautifully arranged and facilitates a level of understanding that makes CPM scheduling very easy to learn – and possibly teach. You have a gift."
I added two new pages covering delay and claims analysis.
Added new content on calendars, cost loading, and rules-of-thumb in Chapter 10. Added out-of-sequence progress section to start Chapter 11. Updated all pages to remove non-conformant HTML and to improve accessability.
From time to time visitors to this site ask for help on specific problems unfortunately, I cannot since I do not provide paid CPM consulting services. At least two or three times a year I am asked to answer questions pertaining to problems presented at college and university courses. I cannot answer these questions either since I do not provide paid tutoring service.
Based on helpful comments provided by a reviewer of this site, and review of another on-line text book, I will be offering a printed version of these class notes. This small book will include answers to all the problems and additional details on some of the analysis presented here. I would expect the cost of this book to be $25.00 (US). I plan to use a print on demand service such as lulu.com for distribution of this book. Please let me know if you would like a copy by emailing cpmtutor"at"gmail"dot"com.
As part of an independent study for my masters at degree program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering I created a set of computer-based training tools to assist undergraduates learning scheduling for the first time. The tutorial was primarily focused on the mechanics of the precedence or activity-on-node diagrams contained with the Critical Path Method (CPM). Guidelines for effective scheduling were also included based on a number of sources including (1) my introduction to real-life scheduling as a Corps of Engineers project engineer, (2) scheduling consulting work I performed for U.S. Army Reserve, (3) academic study and research, and (4) interaction with professional and academic colleagues.
After completing my Masters, I began to teach a portion of an undergraduate Construction Management survey course related to scheduling. I prepared my own set of class notes that provided a practical mix of scheduling theory and practice. Sample problems and questions were also included in the packet. The packet has been in limited but continuous use since its creation.
Since 1990 I have been pleasantly surprised that the web-based tutor was well received. When the tutorial was created, the acceptance of web-based training was not a forgone conclusion. Back in those days when people spoke about the "Amazon," they were talking about a river and not where they just bought their favorite color of Roomba. Today, a large proportion of corporate and professional training occurs through the web. The majority of this training is provided through sites that require registration or up-front fees.
My tutorial and class note package was used at several Universities to supplement classroom study. The web-based tutorial was directly in vocational education, and used by practitioners to find out why to use the features described in complex software manuals. The unfortunate side of the success of the original CPM Tutor was that people began to request fixes, changes, and additions. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to respond to these requests, until the fall of 2007.
My goals for this second edition of the CPM Tutor are to: (1) provide training in basic precedence method calculations, (2) extend the course using course materials on advanced topics, (3) re-organize the course in the order in which an experienced construction manager might go about creating and using a schedule, (4) provide training that is independant of vendor-specific implementations, and (5) provide a mechanism for users who find value in the material provided to support continued hosting of this material.
Thanks to Erwin Aligam for the Envision web site template used for this web site. For other great designs please visit StyleShout.