Assessment of the Impact of Changing Activities’ Start Times on Cash-Flow Parameters

Contractors usually manage multiple activities within a single
project in which activities’ start times are controlling the values of
cash-flow parameters. Since, in any given schedule, the start time of
activities vary while their dependencies are maintained, the other
cash-flow parameters vary. Therefore, Simulation technique has
been employed to generate schedules and their associated cash
flow parameters by randomly specifying the activities’ start times
between their respective early and late start times. Uniform discrete
probability distributions are assumed for the activities’ start times.
In addition, the simulation model considered the stochastic nature of
cash in and cash out transactions in the cash flow model considering
the impact of 43 qualitative factors. Three scenarios are defined; each
incorporating a different number of qualitative factors which impact
the project cash inflow and cash outflow transactions. Advanced
sensitivity analysis is performed to measure the impact of changing
the start times on cash flow. The activities’ criticality to cash-flow
parameters is assessed by evaluating the number of times a given
activity determined a particular cash-flow parameter over the number
of runs. This criticality measurement offers project managers useful
criteria with which to identify the activities that are most urgent to be
completed on time.