The Planning Process

Setting a Realistic Timetable

Once you have selected responses, you should pay careful attention to how long the response implementation will take. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Stakeholders and intervention recipients will expect the implementation to be completed within a specified time.
• Failure to meet the deadline may reflect poorly on the implementing team and on the organization as a whole.
• There is an opportunity cost associated with extended implementation periods in that additional time spent on a response will detract from other work that the implementing team could be undertaking.
• In some cases, there may be a very real financial cost, especially if delays mean that contracted staff or hired equipment needs to be used for a longer period.

Most of us pay little attention to the timetables required for a response, and calculate these in one of two ways. We either pick a time off the top of our head, based on a rough calculation of how long the most salient tasks will take, or we think of a deadline first and then fit the tasks into the available time. From a planning perspective, neither is sufficient, as both allow for the possibility of significant time overruns.

A preferred approach to developing a realistic timetable is to produce a Gantt chart using the following "key stage" approach:

1. Identify all of the individual tasks involved in the intervention.
2. Group these tasks into "key stages," based on activities that appear to relate to each other and that, ideally, can be assigned to a single person. While you may have a hundred individual tasks, these may be grouped into, say, a dozen key stages.
3. Order the stages into a logical sequence showing dependencies between key stages. Look for opportunities for running key stages in parallel, as the more that are run in parallel, the shorter the overall project time. This should result in a "project logic diagram." Figure 1 provides a project logic diagram for installing a CCTV system in a parking ramp. Note that there are two points at which key stages are run in parallel. In producing the project logic diagram, you should take into account the following rules:

• Time flows from left to right.
• There is no timescale attached at this stage.
• Place a start box on the left of the sheet.
• Place a finish box at the end of the sheet.
• There should be one box for each key stage.
• Start each key stage with a verb.
• Do not add durations at this point.
• Place boxes in order of dependency, debating each one.
• Validate dependencies by working through the process.
• Do not take people doing the work into account.
• Do not add in responsibilities at this stage.
• Draw in the dependency links with straight arrows.
• Avoid arrows that cross.