CMAA Construction Management Practice Exam

Crashing is the technique that uses additional resources to shorten the project schedule by compressing critical activities. Since the overall finish date is dictated by the critical path, the only way to shorten the project duration is to shorten tasks on that path. By adding people, equipment, or overtime to those critical tasks, you can reduce their durations and thus finish sooner. This comes with higher costs and increased coordination risk, but it specifically targets the activities that determine the schedule. Fast tracking would shorten the schedule by overlapping tasks without extra resources, the Critical Chain Method uses buffers and focuses on resource constraints to protect the timeline, and the Critical Path Method identifies which tasks form the critical path but does not itself shorten the project.