Intensive Care Hospital - Case Study _Incident to Discuss: Intensive Care Hospital The Intensive Care Hospital is planning to purchase a CATSCAN within the next six months. Although not mentioned in the text, the cost of the equipment will amount to at least several hundred thousand dollars, and could even exceed $1 million. Furthermore, major renovation work is needed on the radiology department where the equipment will be housed. Unfortunately, the construction project cannot begin until the machine is installed, which will be in five months. The ProjectManager (“PM”) believes that it may be able to accelerate the construction schedule by using a resource allocation version of the Critical PathMethod (“CPM”). Putting the machine into operation is of great interest to the hospital, as the revenue generated by CATSCAN is expected to be in the order of $25,000 per month. According to the text, the project should last twelve months. The waiting time for the CATSCAN is five months. This leaves the Prime Minister eight months to achieve his target. Since the equipment arrives at the same time as the construction project begins, I would suggest a combination of a heuristic approach using an "As Late As Possible" priority ("ALAP") with an accelerated approach to the actual construction. The reason for the ALAP approach is the five-month delay before the equipment is delivered. Refraining from allocating resources during this slow period should, in theory, allow the Prime Minister to reserve monetary resources for the Crash period. I imagine that part-time assignment of administrative support, soliciting construction bids, generating reports and requests for management approval along with full-time PM participation would be sufficient. During this period the Prime Minister will work with hospital management to generate a detailed project plan and scope of work. In this situation several critical elements come into play. During the construction period, for example, two moves of the current radiology department, or at least of the area that will host the CATSCAN, will be necessary. The first will aim to free up the space needed for the new CATSCAN area, including construction corridors, in a temporary location. So, once the equipment is installed and the renovations in this area are completed, the rest of the department will also need to be renovated. This aspect of the project will require extensive coordination with other departments in the hospital. This includes administrative staff, medical staff, suppliers (collections and deliveries), cleaning staff and mainly the radiology staff themselves. During the first five months of the project I suspect that this coordination and planning alone would consume 50% of the PM's time.