Fred is the project manager of a hotel restoration project. The hotel has 456 rooms. All rooms
need to be primed and painted. Before each room can be painted, the primer must cure for twenty-four hours. Fred has arranged these tasks with a finish to start relationship between the priming
and the painting. What else should Fred do to account for the twenty-four hours of cure time?

A.
Fred should add twenty-four hours of lead time to each of the 456 rooms painting activity to
account for the primer’s curing time.

B.
Fred should add twenty-four hours of lag time to each of the 456 rooms painting activity to
account for the primer’s curing time.

C.
Fred should add an intermediary task with a duration of twenty-four hours.

D.
Fred should schedule all 456 hotels rooms to be primed first and then schedule all 456 rooms
to be painted to ensure time for the curing.

Explanation:
Fred should add lag time to each painting activity. Since lag time is waiting time, Fred will have to
wait twenty-four hours after the priming is finished before he can start painting. What is a lag? A
lag directs a delay in the successor activity. Lags require the dependent activity to have added
either to the start date or to the finish date of the activity. For example, in a project of making
radio-controlled airplanes, after applying glue and pasting stickers, it requires twenty-four hours to
dry the glue. Any activity can be started after that only. This period, of twenty-four hours, is a lag.
Answer option C is incorrect. There is no reason to add an intermediary task as waiting. Adding
lag time is the most appropriate as there are fewer activities to manage.
Answer option D is incorrect. Priming all of the room first and then painting all of the rooms would
cause Fred to readjust the entire sequencing of activities. In addition, we do not know the reason
why Fred has scheduled all the rooms to be primed and then painted. There may be successor
activities in the project that need to enter each room, such as carpeting, as soon as a room has
been painted. If that were the case the additional activities would have to wait for all of the priming
to be completed and then the sequential rooms to be painted before they could start.
Answer option A is incorrect. Lead time actually moves activities closer together rather than farther
apart. Lead time would cause the painting and priming activities to overlap, something that Fred
does not want to happen. What is a lead? A lead allows an acceleration of the successor activity.
It works just the opposite of lag. For example, in a software application project, before designing is
fully completed for first phase, a program development group can start this phase programming.
This overlapping of timing is a lead.