Cushion Timing

Planning any economic or business project is always a difficult task because of the time considerations. We will have to balance the quality of work with the time allotted for the completion of the work. And for this we require a schedule that well explains each step and the estimated time for completing the project. The concept of “cushion time” is an essential part of project planning.

Time cushions:

Cushion time is the extra time that is to be added in your project calendar to take care of the unforeseen contingencies. Inserting cushion times certainly improves project management. The problems caused by worker absenteeism, weather, and equipment breakdowns, etc. can be perfectly managed by these time cushions. You should have a plan on how to insert cushion times for the best result. Too much cushion time can cause unnecessary delays. When you're not sure whether a task can be completed in the allocated time, you can add an extra cushion and lengthen the total duration.

When dealing with computers and computerized assembly, cushion time should be added for technical problems, viruses, software issues and freezes. Things like power outages can cause long delay. A time cushion needs to take all of these into consideration.

Task Contingencies:

Task contingencies are specific time cushions that are assigned to risky tasks. The contingency amounts remain separate from the tasks. If you not sure about how much time a task might take, you can assign a time cushion as a contingency to make sure that the task is completed by the proposed finish date. Later, you can reduce or remove the contingency once you get some new information to estimate the exact duration of the task.

Slack Time:

When you schedule your tasks, you might find some tasks that cannot be started before completing certain others which are inter-related. This results in time cushions between tasks.

Slack time is the amount of time left after a job if the job was started now. Consider for example tasks A and task B start at the same time and task C is dependent on both tasks A and task B. If task A takes 2 days and task B takes 5 days then task A has 3 days' slack. So slack time is the amount of time a task can be extended or delayed before it impacts on the starting time of other tasks. It’s possible for you to reduce work on the tasks that have slack time and assign more workers to the tasks that are holding you up.

Buffers:

If the time required for a particular work is uncertain, then you can insert time cushions as buffers between individual tasks that together complete the work. Buffers remain explicit time cushions distinct from individual tasks and disappear when the task following the buffer starts.

- Author: Nasser Musliyar

Nasser Musliyar has been in the industry of retail marketing furniture and exhibition stands for 20 years and is a pioneer in Offshore Global Marketing. He can be reached at:nasser@instoremasters.com