| Course | BU 442 Cost and Time Management |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 3 |
| Paper type | Work breakdown and durations |
| Length | About 660 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Project Management |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 442 Unit 3
Seventeen Work Packages, Each With a Duration and the Crew Behind It: Work Breakdown and Durations for Turning an Invented Indiana Hardware Store Into Rentable Kitchen Space
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 442: Cost and Time Management
Instructor Name
February 11, 2026
Seventeen Work Packages, Each With a Duration and the Crew Behind It: Work Breakdown and Durations for Turning an Invented Indiana Hardware Store Into Rentable Kitchen Space
Why the Work Is Broken Down Here
The cost estimate for Fort Wayne Food Works, a composite nonprofit turning an empty hardware store into a shared commercial kitchen, priced fourteen elements. Before a schedule can be built, the work must be broken down until each piece has a clear deliverable, a single party responsible and a duration that can be estimated and later measured. This record does that. The PMBOK guide treats the work breakdown structure as the hierarchy that divides a project's scope into smaller deliverables, ending in work packages (Project Management Institute, 2017), and a duration is only meaningful when it is attached to a package defined that way.
Two rules guided the decomposition. A package stops being broken down when one crew, contractor or vendor delivers it and its progress can be measured in physical units, such as feet of hood installed or square feet of floor finished. And packages that happen at different times, such as fabricating hoods in a shop and installing them on site, are separated even when one contractor does both, because they sit in different places on the schedule. A third rule kept inspections and approvals as packages of their own, even though Food Works does little of the work, since the city and county control their timing and the schedule must show that dependence openly rather than bury it inside construction.
The Breakdown
The breakdown has seven branches. Project management is a level-of-effort package that runs for the whole schedule and has no duration of its own.
| Code | Work package | Deliverable | Responsible |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | Design and engineering | Permit drawings and specifications | Architect with engineers |
| 1.2 | Permit review | Issued building permit | City plan review |
| 2.1 | Demolition and abatement | Cleared interior, abatement report | Demolition contractor |
| 3.1 | Electrical service and distribution | New 800-amp service and panels, rough wiring | Electrical contractor |
| 3.2 | Plumbing and grease interceptor | Rough plumbing, interceptor installed | Plumbing contractor |
| 3.3 | Heating, cooling and make-up air | Rooftop units and ducts installed | Mechanical contractor |
| 3.4 | Fire suppression | Hood suppression systems tested | Suppression contractor |
| 4.1 | Hood fabrication | Hoods delivered | Fabricator |
| 4.2 | Hood installation | 48 feet of hood hung and connected | Mechanical contractor |
| 4.3 | Walk-in fabrication | Panels and refrigeration delivered | Refrigeration vendor |
| 4.4 | Walk-in installation | Two coolers and a freezer running | Refrigeration vendor |
| 4.5 | Equipment setting | 42 pieces set and connected | Equipment dealer |
| 5.1 | Interior construction | Walls, wall panels, floors, ceilings, doors | General contractor |
| 6.1 | Inspections and health approval | Certificate of occupancy and food permit | City and county |
| 6.2 | Commissioning and training | Systems tested; staff and first tenants trained | Food Works with vendors |
| 7.0 | Project management and general conditions | Coordination, site services, reporting | Project manager |
Durations, Methods and Resource Assumptions
Every duration below is in working days and states the method that produced it and the resource assumption behind it. Durations are elapsed working time, not effort: a package done by two people in ten days has a duration of ten days and an effort of twenty person-days.
| Code | Duration | Method | Resource assumption |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | 30 | Analogous, from architect's recent tenant fit-outs | Architect half time; two engineers part time |
| 1.2 | 20 | City's published review target | One review cycle, no resubmission |
| 2.1 | 10 | Bottom-up: 7,200 square feet at 900 per day, plus 2 days abatement | Four-person crew |
| 3.1 | 25 | Contractor's estimate | Two electricians; includes utility coordination |
| 3.2 | 20 | Parametric: 38 fixtures at about 0.4 day each, plus 5 days interceptor | Two plumbers |
| 3.3 | 20 | Contractor's estimate | Three-person crew; crane one day |
| 3.4 | 8 | Contractor's estimate | Two technicians |
| 4.1 | 30 | Vendor lead time | Fabricator's shop |
| 4.2 | 5 | Bottom-up: 48 feet at about 10 feet per day | Three-person crew |
| 4.3 | 25 | Vendor lead time | Vendor's factory |
| 4.4 | 15 | Bottom-up: three boxes at 5 days each | One two-person crew, boxes in sequence |
| 4.5 | 10 | Dealer's estimate for 42 pieces | Three-person crew |
| 5.1 | 25 | Three-point: 20 / 24 / 34 | Four-person crew |
| 6.1 | 10 | Health department's stated scheduling time | One re-inspection allowed |
| 6.2 | 5 | Allowance | Vendors on site two days |
Where Durations Depend on People
Three durations would change with different staffing, and the assumptions are stated so that the schedule can be adjusted if they change. Walk-in installation assumes one crew installing the three boxes in sequence; with two crews it could fall to about eight days, at the cost of a second crew's travel. Interior construction assumes a four-person crew; the three-point estimate of 20, 24 and 34 days gives a PERT mean of 25 days, and the long pessimistic tail reflects the risk that the old slab needs grinding before the epoxy floor. Design assumes the architect gives the project half her time; the firm has another project finishing in February, and the duration would lengthen if that project slips.
People working part time are handled by duration rather than by hidden assumptions. The design team is part time, so its 30 days is the elapsed time the architect proposed, not the hours of drafting involved. Haugan (2002) cautions against mixing effort and duration in a breakdown, because a schedule built from effort figures assumes everyone works full time on one task.
What the Breakdown Hands to the Schedule
The breakdown gives the network in the next unit sixteen packages with durations and one level-of-effort package. Two lead-time packages, hood fabrication and walk-in fabrication, happen off site and will run in parallel with building work. The longest single durations belong to design, hood fabrication, electrical service, walk-in fabrication and interior construction, but length alone does not decide what drives the finish date; the dependencies do. Kerzner (2017) notes that a breakdown is complete when every deliverable in the scope appears in exactly one package, and a check of the fourteen cost lines against the sixteen packages found each cost line mapped, with hoods and walk-ins split into fabrication and installation. Fort Wayne Food Works and every quantity, crew and duration here are composites for this course.
References
Haugan, G. T. (2002). Effective work breakdown structures. Management Concepts.
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (12th ed.). Wiley.
Project Management Institute. (2017). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (6th ed.). Project Management Institute.
BU 442 Unit 3 instructions, in plain terms
BU 442 Unit 3 asks students to decompose a project's scope into a work breakdown structure and estimate a duration for each lowest-level element. Common requirements include a coded hierarchy, deliverables and responsible parties for each package, durations with the method used and the resource assumption behind them, and attention to part-time resources. Many instructors want students to distinguish effort from duration. The breakdown should link to the cost estimate so every priced item appears in a package, and durations should be stated in working days with any holidays noted. A table for the breakdown and one for durations are typical, with APA 7 explanation. Strong submissions state the rule used to decide when decomposition stops.
Inside the BU 442 Unit 3 example
The sample begins by explaining why the work must be broken down before scheduling and states two decomposition rules, plus a third that keeps inspections as separate packages. A table lists seventeen packages with codes, deliverables and responsible parties. A second table gives each package's duration, estimating method and resource assumption, preceded by a note distinguishing effort from duration. A section discusses three durations that would change with staffing, including a three-point interior estimate, and explains how part-time design work is handled. The closing section describes what the breakdown hands to the network unit, notes which packages are longest, and confirms that each cost line maps to a package.
BU 442 Unit 3 rubric: what full points look like
Rubrics for the breakdown and durations unit usually reward a logical, complete decomposition, clear package definitions, justified durations, explicit resource assumptions and alignment with the cost estimate, plus presentation. Decomposition earns full credit when every deliverable appears once and packages are measurable. Package definitions score highest with a deliverable and a responsible party. Durations are judged on whether each states its estimating method. Resource assumptions earn points when crew size or availability is stated, since durations change with staffing. Alignment rewards showing that cost lines and packages match. Instructors also credit a clear distinction between effort and duration, a frequent source of scheduling errors when people work part time or on several projects.
BU 442 Unit 3 help before you submit
Work breakdowns often lose points by listing activities, verbs, instead of deliverables, or by mixing the two. Another common problem is decomposing unevenly, with some branches detailed and others left as single lines. Students frequently give durations with no method or crew, so they cannot be checked. Some confuse effort with duration, assuming everyone works full time on one task. Others merge work that happens at different times, such as off-site fabrication and on-site installation. Many breakdowns fail to include approvals controlled by outside parties. Finally, a breakdown that does not match the cost estimate leaves costs with nowhere to attach when earned value begins, and the gap usually surfaces only at the first status report.
Get a BU 442 Unit 3 example written to your instructions
Forward the Unit 3 instructions with the rubric from your BU 442 classroom and the project scope your section supplies. We write a custom example that decomposes to a measurable level, writes completion criteria before durations, keeps effort and duration apart, names the method on each element and fixes identifiers once. First custom sample free, back in 24 to 48 hours.
More BU 442 papers and project management samples
- BU 442 Unit 1: Estimating methods paper
- BU 442 Unit 2: Cost estimate with basis
- BU 442 Unit 4: Network diagram and critical path
- BU 442 Unit 5: Budget and contingency
- BU 442 Unit 6: Earned value calculation
- BU 442 Unit 7: Variance analysis with response
- BU 442 Unit 8: Forecast and status report
- BU 433 Unit 3: Backlog with prioritization basis
- BU 434 Unit 3: Problem definition
- BU 436 Unit 3: Decision rights and escalation
- BU 345 Unit 3: Scope and work breakdown document
BU 442 Unit 3 questions, answered
Is this the same breakdown a project management course asks for?
It looks similar and it is doing a different job. There the decomposition defines what the project includes so a sponsor can agree to it. Here it exists to carry durations and costs that will be measured against actual performance later in the term, which is why completion criteria and stable identifiers matter more than coverage of scope.
How far down should the decomposition go?
Until an element is small enough that you could tell whether it is finished without asking anybody, and no further. Depth is allowed to be uneven: a deliverable you understand well can stay coarse while one carrying most of the uncertainty gets split further. Say in a short note why you stopped where you did, since that reasoning is often what the criterion rewards.
Should durations account for people working part time?
Yes, and showing that calculation is worth credit. State the effort in hours or days, state what proportion of a person is assumed available, and let the duration fall out of the two rather than being asserted. Where the instructions ask only for durations, keep the availability assumption in a note so a reader can see why an element runs as long as it does.
Where can I find a free BU 442 Unit 3 sample paper?
You can read the whole BU 442 Unit 3 work breakdown and durations example here at no charge, including the package list, the duration table and margin notes. If your project is different, share your instructions and we write a custom breakdown without charge, usually within two days.
How far should the breakdown go in BU 442 Unit 3?
Until one crew or vendor delivers each package and its progress can be measured. The sample stops at seventeen packages and separates fabrication from installation because they happen at different times.