COPES
1. PLEASE SEE CPM first. COPES (Computerized Operations Planning Estimating & Scheduling) was developed by George Ingram the CEO of Atad Corporation in the 1970's and consists of Project Work Activities, Detail Events, Minor Milestone Events & Major Milestone Events connected by different Restraint Activities assigned specific codes that the computer program can use to perform analytical analysis to reduce the Critical Path and shorten the project time, not just Dummy Restraints. Executive Level Management COPES reports are oriented to communicating without any detail in a Major Milestone Event report that makes it easier for them to relate to where the project is without displaying the Supervisor & Worker level details of planning & scheduling data. Supervisor & Worker level reports provide Detail Activities with Detail Events, Minor Milestone Events and Major Milestone Events report that more accurately predicts Event occurrence, since activity estimates are collected from Supervisors & Workers who are performing the detailed activities and are used to provide the critical path for the Project Supervisors & Workers Detail & Minor Milestone Events and Top Management Major Milestone Events. 2. COPES combines WA=Work Activities, highly defined Restraint Activities that are selected by a series of analytic questions, when looking at the relationship between a pair Work Activities or a Work Activity & a Detail Event or a Minor Milestone Event or a Major Milestone Event. 3. Top Management does not want a report with the detail of CPM. They want PERT Major Milestone Event reporting without the detail. COPES supplies both requirement. 4. Supervisors and Workers need to be able to identify a Work Activity they are performing on a detail activity network and the specific type of Restraint Activities that restrain their Work Activity, so they can provide more accurate estimate of the time to perform and complete. COPES supplies that requirement. 5. There are two Top level type codes of restraints that tell the computer if the Restraint Activity between two Work Activity can be changed to reduce the project time; they are R=Required or O=Optional. 6. There are three Major level types of relationship between Work Activities that define restraints within the top level of Required or Optional; they are RS=Required Series, RO= Required Overlap & RP=Required Parallel, OS=Optional Series, OO=Optional Overlap, Optional Parallel. 7. There are 14 Lead Time Categories of Restraint Activities that can delay a Project Activity from beginning and or completing; they are BM=Building Material, CE=Construction Equipment, FF=Furniture & Fixtures, ID=Interior Decoration, IT=Inspection Testing Approval LA=Labor Available, MA=Manufacturing, PA=Plan Approval, PC=Project Capital, PE=Process Equipment, PU=Purchasing, RF=Rate of Cash Flow, SH=Shipping and a "Multiple Restraint Activity" with zero time. 8. There can only be one Activity line of any type between two Event Nodes, because Activities are defined by their Predecessor node and their Successor node. 9. A Heuristic Network consists of the following elements. A. Lines between Nodes: Defined as Work Activities that include three estimates; optimistic, most likely and pessimistic and a brief description of the work to be performed. B. Lines between Nodes: Defined as Restraint Activities that include three estimates; optimistic, most likely and pessimistic and a brief description of the type of Restraint Activity. C. Lines only between Restraint Nodes and Work Activity Beginning Nodes: Defined as Multiple Restraint Activities that include a Zero estimate and the Description is "Multiple Restraint Activity". D. Square Box Nodes: Define as Events or Milestones named "Multiple", "Begin", "Continue", "End" of continue or "Complete" as a prefix of the Event description. E. Event (Node) Box: Includes an area for "TE" (Time Earliest) Calculation through the network from start to project complete end nodes; for "TL" (Time Latest) Calculation. F. EVENT (Node) Box: includes an area for Required Completion date: before the TL calculation is started the last Project and other Nodes are examined for a Required Completion Date and if found it is convert and placed in the "TL" to used in the calculation from each project Complete end node to the start node of the project. G. EVENT (Node) Box: includes an area for the positive or negative "Slack" calculated as the difference between the "TL" and the "TE" of each Event (Node).
The path through the network that has the most negative or least positive Slack determines the critical path. 10. When creating the original Work Activity and Work Event network, discussion with the Supervisors by the Planning Engineer must consider 5, 6 & 7 to define the Specific Restraint code and determine how many different Restraint Activities effect that Work Activity. If more than one Restraint is needed between the Predecessor Activity's Successor Event and the Begin or Continue Event of a single Successor Activity in this sequence; 1: A Multiple Activity restraint of zero time, 2: a Begin or Continue Event and 3: One of the Eight Lead Time Specifically Described Activity of restraint time must be between the Predecessor Activity Event and the Successor Activity Predecessor Event. 11. Then the computer program begins analysis of the most critical path to determine what activities can be logically moved and preforms the TE, TL and Slack calculations again to see if it has improved the end date. When it has reach the number of re-calculations specified by the planning engineer it will stop and print out the best solution it could achieve.
This is a summary and does not disclose all of the features of this proprietary computer program.