DURATION Statement

The CPM Procedure

DURATION Statement

DURATION variable / options ;
DUR variable ;

The DURATION statement identifies the variable in the Activity data set that contains the length of time necessary to complete the activity. If the network is input in AOA format, then the variable identifies the duration of the activity denoted by the arc joining the TAILNODE and the HEADNODE. If the network is input in AON format, then the variable identifies the duration of the activity specified in the ACTIVITY statement. The variable specified must be numeric. The DURATION statement must be specified. The values of the DURATION variable are assumed to be in interval units, where interval is the value of the INTERVAL= option.

If you want the procedure to compute the durations of the activities based on specified start and finish times, you can specify the start and finish times in the Activity data set, identified by the variables specified in the START= and FINISH= options. By default, the computed duration is used only if the value of the DURATION variable is missing for that activity. Note that the duration is computed in units of the INTERVAL= parameter, taking into account the calendar defined for the activity.

In addition to specifying a fixed duration for an activity, you can specify the amount of work required (in units of the INTERVAL parameter) from each resource for a given activity. The WORK variable enables you to specify resource-driven durations for an activity; these (possibly different) durations are used to calculate the length of time required for the acitivity to be completed.

The following options can be specified in the DURATION statement after a slash (/).

FINISH=variable: specifies a variable in the Activity data set that is to be used in conjunction with the START variable to determine the activity's duration.
START=variable: specifies a variable in the Activity data set that is to be used in conjunction with the FINISH variable to determine the activity's duration.
OVERRIDEDUR: specifies that if the START= and FINISH= values are not missing, the duration computed from these values is to be used in place of the duration specified for the activity. In other words, the computed duration is used in place of the duration specified for the activity.

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