| Course | MAN-4350 Project Management |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 5 |
| Paper type | Written assignment 5: project scheduling and cost estimation |
| Length | About 1,058 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Thomas Edison State University |
| Program | B.S. in General Management |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MAN 4350 Module 5
Eighteen Weeks Through the Vendor's Factory: The Schedule, Critical Path and Bottom-Up Budget for a Blueberry Sorting Line
Student Name
B.S. in General Management, Thomas Edison State University
MAN-4350: Project Management
Mentor Name
Month Day, Year
Eighteen Weeks Through the Vendor's Factory: The Schedule, Critical Path and Bottom-Up Budget for a Blueberry Sorting Line
The Mullica Valley Growers, a composite fruit cooperative serving thirty-eight farms around Hammonton, New Jersey, must have its new optical sorting line accepted by May 25 so that the crew is ready for the first berries around June 1. Work begins on January 19 with $2.4 million approved. This assignment builds the project's activity network, calculates the critical path and float for each activity, evaluates whether to pay to shorten the schedule and prepares a bottom-up cost estimate. I am the operations coordinator and part-time project manager; the durations come from the vendor, the electrician and the maintenance supervisor, and the costs from their written quotes. Durations are most likely values rather than optimistic ones, because a schedule built on best cases leaves no room for the ordinary delays of winter construction, such as frozen ground for the foundations or a utility crew diverted by storms.
Activities and Durations
Pinto (2019) recommends building the schedule from the work breakdown structure, so each activity below corresponds to a work package or a group of them, with durations in weeks. The network uses activity-on-node logic and finish-to-start dependencies.
| Activity | Duration (weeks) | Predecessors | Earliest start (week) | Earliest finish (week) | Latest start (week) | Latest finish (week) | Float |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A: Sign contract and place equipment order | 2 | None | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| B: Utility service application and approval | 5 | None | 0 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 5 |
| C: Equipment manufacture and shipping | 11 | A | 2 | 13 | 2 | 13 | 0 |
| D: Remove hand-sort tables, reroute drains | 3 | A | 2 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 3 |
| E: Pour equipment foundations | 2 | D | 5 | 7 | 11 | 13 | 6 |
| F: Transformer and 480-volt service | 3 | B | 5 | 8 | 10 | 13 | 5 |
| G: Cooling room panels and refrigeration | 8 | D | 5 | 13 | 8 | 16 | 3 |
| H: Install sorter and filler | 3 | C, E, F | 13 | 16 | 13 | 16 | 0 |
| I: Train operators on both shifts | 2 | H | 16 | 18 | 16 | 18 | 0 |
| J: Test runs and acceptance | 2 | G, H | 16 | 18 | 16 | 18 | 0 |
Forward and Backward Passes
The forward pass gives each activity its earliest start, the latest early finish among its predecessors, and its earliest finish. Installation (H) cannot begin until the equipment arrives, the foundations are poured and the power is on; the latest of these is the equipment at week 13, so H starts at week 13 and finishes at week 16. Training and testing each take two weeks, so the project finishes at week 18, which is May 25. The backward pass works from week 18 to find the latest each activity can start without delaying the finish (Kelley & Walker, 1959).
Float is the difference between the late and early starts. Activities A, C, H, I and J have none, which makes A-C-H-I and A-C-H-J the critical paths. The electrical path (B and F) has five weeks of float, the foundations six and the cooling room three. Two findings follow. First, the schedule depends almost entirely on the vendor's factory: any slip in equipment manufacture moves the finish date week for week. Second, the cooling room has only three weeks of float, so a contractor delay of more than three weeks would make it critical as well. The electrical path looks safe, but its five weeks of float depend on the utility, which sets its own calendar, so I will treat it as a watched path rather than a free one.
Should the Schedule Be Crashed?
Pinto (2019) explains crashing as shortening critical activities by adding resources, usually at extra cost, and advises crashing only where the time saved is worth the money. Finishing on May 25 leaves only one week of margin before the expected harvest, and a warm May can bring berries early. The vendor has offered an earlier production slot that would cut manufacture and shipping from eleven weeks to nine for an expediting fee of $24,000, or $12,000 a week.
Crashing C by two weeks moves installation to week 11 and the finish to week 16, May 11. The cooling room path, at fifteen weeks, then has one week of float and becomes the next constraint, so further crashing of C would buy nothing without also speeding the cooling room. Two weeks of extra testing and training are worth more than $24,000 to the cooperative, since a single week of hand-sorting at the start of the season costs roughly $63,000 in labor. I recommend accepting the offer.
Bottom-Up Cost Estimate
The estimate was built bottom-up, from quotes and labor estimates for each work package, rather than top-down from the approved figure. Pinto (2019) notes that bottom-up estimates are more accurate but take longer, and that top-down figures are useful mainly as a check. Equipment, including the sorter, the filler, freight and the vendor's installation crew, totals $1,486,000. The electrical service is $207,000, including the utility's charge for the transformer. Site preparation is $98,000, the cooling room expansion $282,000, training and commissioning $50,000, and project management, engineering and permits $80,000. Direct costs make up most of the total; the project management line is the main indirect cost.
The subtotal is $2,203,000. A contingency of 8 percent, $176,240, is added for known risks such as cost growth in the cooling room, for a budget of $2,379,240 within the approved $2.4 million. The $24,000 expediting fee would come from that contingency, leaving about $152,000. Flyvbjerg et al. (2002) found that costs were underestimated in about nine out of ten of the transport infrastructure projects they studied, and they concluded that the pattern was better explained by strategic misrepresentation than by honest error. Whatever the cause, the lesson for a small project is the same, so the two largest quotes are fixed-price, and the contingency is drawn only with the general manager's approval.
Conclusion
The network gives an eighteen-week plan in which the vendor's factory sets the pace, with float on the electrical, foundation and cooling-room paths. Paying $24,000 to cut two weeks from manufacture moves acceptance to May 11 and is justified by the cost of hand-sorting if the harvest arrives early. The bottom-up estimate of $2.38 million, with an 8 percent contingency, fits within the approved budget, and fixed-price quotes on the largest items protect it against the optimism that research finds in most estimates.
References
Flyvbjerg, B., Holm, M. S., & Buhl, S. (2002). Underestimating costs in public works projects: Error or lie? Journal of the American Planning Association, 68(3), 279-295. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360208976273
Kelley, J. E., & 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
Pinto, J. K. (2019). Project management: Achieving competitive advantage (5th ed.). Pearson.
What the MAN 4350 Module 5 instructions ask for
Module 5 of MAN-4350 covers project scheduling and cost estimation and supports the objective on evaluating project management tools and techniques. Its written assignment draws on Pinto's chapters on cost estimation and budgeting and on scheduling with networks, duration estimates and the critical path, along with crashing. Expect to build or analyze a network, calculate early and late dates and float, identify the critical path and prepare or critique a cost estimate. Show your calculations in a table, because mentors need to see the method and not only the answer. Ask the crews and vendors themselves for durations where you can, and say where each figure came from.
How this MAN 4350 Module 5 example is built
The sample starts from a fixed start date, deadline and budget and draws its durations from the people doing the work. One table lists, for every activity, how long it takes, what must come before it, its four calculated dates and its slack. The analysis explains the forward and backward passes in words, names the critical paths and interprets what the float means for monitoring. The crashing section prices the time saved, shows how a new near-critical path limits further crashing and compares the cost to the value of the weeks gained. The cost section builds the budget by work package, adds contingency and uses research on estimating bias. All dates are converted to calendar days so the reader can see how the plan meets the harvest.
Reading the MAN 4350 Module 5 grading rubric
Like every MAN-4350 written assignment, this one receives a grade between 0 and 100. Mentors check that the network logic is sound, that early and late dates and float are calculated correctly and that the critical path is identified. Credit goes to papers that interpret the results, for example by explaining which activities need the closest watch or whether crashing pays. Cost estimates should state their method, separate direct and indirect costs where relevant and include a reasoned contingency. Clear tables, cited sources and correct APA formatting complete the grade. Connecting the schedule and the budget, as when crashing draws on contingency, shows a mature grasp of the two topics.
MAN 4350 Module 5 help from the desk
The most frequent errors in this assignment are arithmetic: taking the earliest rather than the latest predecessor finish on the forward pass, or the latest rather than the earliest successor start on the backward pass. Another is crashing an activity that is not critical, or crashing so far that another path becomes critical without noticing. Cost estimates often add contingency without explaining its basis. Check every date twice, and convert week numbers to calendar dates so that holidays and seasonal limits become visible. Our writers can work through a MAN 4350 scheduling and cost assignment with the network and calculations shown in full.
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MAN 4350 Module 5 questions, answered
Where can I find a free MAN 4350 Module 5 sample paper?
The fifth Project Management written assignment is reproduced above: an activity network with early and late dates, the critical path and float, a crashing decision and a bottom-up cost estimate for a cooperative's sorting line.
How do you find the critical path?
Calculate early dates forward and late dates backward through the network; the chain of activities that cannot slip at all is the critical path.
What is float in a project schedule?
How long an activity may be delayed before the finish date moves, found by subtracting its early start from its late start.
When is crashing a project worth it?
When the value of the time saved exceeds the extra cost, and only for critical activities, stopping when another path becomes critical.
What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up cost estimates?
Top-down estimates start from an overall figure or past projects, while bottom-up estimates add up the costs of each work package; bottom-up is slower but usually more accurate.