ABSTRACT
Network analysis is a comparatively new approach to planning and controlling projects. The technique has had wide publicity and is often referred to as programme evaluation and review technique (PERT) or critical path method. In all some thirty to forty different names have been invented to represent this technique. PERT was developed about 1958 as the outcome of collaboration between the Operational Research Division of the United States Navy and a firm of business consultants. Arising from the initial planning, network analysis will show which jobs in fact control the rate of progress and which jobs have time to spare. A simplified network can be represented on a horizontal scale, similar to a Gantt chart, on which float can be illustrated graphically. The diagram below shows a network, in horizontal form on a time-scale, for the project of fixing a door to its frame.
