Activity Duration from Production Rate practice problems for the FE Civil exam

Scheduling questions on the FE Civil exam begin by turning a quantity of work and a crew production rate into a duration. The relationship is a single division, so the difficulty is entirely in making the two inputs compatible before dividing. A quantity given in cubic yards and a rate given in cubic yards per hour produce hours. The same quantity against a rate given in cubic yards per crew-day produces crew-days, and if two crews are working the calendar duration is half that. Read the denominator of the production rate carefully, because it silently determines the unit of the answer. Two conversions cause most of the lost points. The first is volume: cubic yards, cubic feet, and cubic metres appear in the same problem set and a factor of 27 between cubic yards and cubic feet is easy to skip. The second is time: a rate per hour has to be multiplied by the shift length before it becomes a rate per day, and an eight-hour day and a ten-hour day give different answers from identical inputs. Finally, durations are usually reported in whole shifts. Two and a quarter days of work occupies three working days on a schedule, so round up unless the question explicitly asks for the raw figure.

Key formulas

Duration from quantity and production rate: duration = quantity / production_rate
Daily output of a crew: rate_per_day = rate_per_hour * hours_per_shift
Duration with multiple crews: duration = quantity / (rate_per_crew * number_of_crews)
Unit cost of an activity: unit_cost = total_cost / quantity
Volume conversion: 1 cubic yard = 27 cubic feet = 0.7646 cubic metres

Common mistakes

Dividing a quantity in cubic yards by a rate in cubic feet per hour without converting.
Treating a per-crew production rate as the total rate when more than one crew is assigned.
Using a rate per hour as if it were a rate per day, skipping the shift length.
Reporting a fractional duration where the schedule needs whole working days.

8 worked practice problems

Commit to an answer before opening the solution. Each problem shows the governing model, every substitution, a unit check, and why each wrong choice is wrong.

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Background reading

Original question written by FE Exam AI Prep from the public FE Civil exam specification. Before release, a solver model re-derived the answer twice from the question alone, without its answer key, and a critic model checked the result. No licensed engineer reviews these questions. It is not an NCEES question and does not come from any NCEES practice exam. FE Exam AI Prep is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NCEES.

Activity Duration from Production Rate practice problems for the FE Civil exam

Key formulas

Duration from quantity and production rate: duration = quantity / production_rate
Daily output of a crew: rate_per_day = rate_per_hour * hours_per_shift
Duration with multiple crews: duration = quantity / (rate_per_crew * number_of_crews)
Unit cost of an activity: unit_cost = total_cost / quantity
Volume conversion: 1 cubic yard = 27 cubic feet = 0.7646 cubic metres

Common mistakes

Dividing a quantity in cubic yards by a rate in cubic feet per hour without converting.
Treating a per-crew production rate as the total rate when more than one crew is assigned.
Using a rate per hour as if it were a rate per day, skipping the shift length.
Reporting a fractional duration where the schedule needs whole working days.

8 worked practice problems

Commit to an answer before opening the solution. Each problem shows the governing model, every substitution, a unit check, and why each wrong choice is wrong.