Crash (Schedule duration)

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A Schedule duration crash is the effort to reduce the overall duration of a schedule. Usually the following techniques are employed:

• Adding resources (human or otherwise)
• Increasing work hours (overtime, weekends)

Crashing is done as a trade-off between shorter task duration and higher task costs. It must be determined whether the total cost savings realized from reducing the project duration is enough to justify the higher costs associated with reducing the individual tasks. If the cost savings on a delay penalty are higher than the incremental cost of reducing the project duration, then the crashing is justified.

Indices are typically used to measure incremental cost versus time reduction, where:

Crashing Ratio (r) = (Crash Cost - Normal Cost)/(Normal Duration - Crash Duration)