Projects fall behind. Deadlines tighten. Owners need to occupy the building sooner than planned. When the schedule needs to compress, architects have two primary strategies: fast-tracking and crashing. Each carries distinct trade-offs, and choosing the wrong one (or applying either one carelessly) can make a bad situation worse.

Fast-tracking means overlapping activities that would normally happen in sequence. Instead of finishing design before starting construction, the team issues foundation and structural packages early while the rest of the design continues. The schedule shortens because two phases run in parallel. The cost? Increased risk. Design decisions get locked in early, making later changes difficult and expensive. Change orders tend to increase in both frequency and cost. Coordination suffers because the full picture isn't complete when construction begins.

Crashing means adding resources to shorten an activity's duration. More workers on the steel erection, overtime shifts for the electricians, or hiring a second drywall crew. The schedule shortens because critical activities finish faster. The cost? Actual dollars. More labor, more equipment, and sometimes diminishing returns, because doubling the crew doesn't halve the duration.

Both strategies target the critical path, because compressing non-critical activities doesn't shorten the project. Both require careful analysis of which activities to target and what the trade-offs are. And both show up repeatedly on the ARE, where candidates must evaluate scenarios and make judgment calls about which approach (or combination) best serves the project.

Fast-tracking is common in CM at-Risk, Design-Build, and IPD delivery methods. Crashing applies across all delivery methods whenever the critical path needs shortening and the budget can absorb the additional cost.