Two thoughts on your second question…. Because your PM line item is the longest path, it fits the definition of a critical path. What I’ve done in the past is to make that duration 1 day less than the true critical path, thereby removing it from the CP calculation. Additionally, what I do to report Top 3 Critical Paths is to perform a “Driving Path Analysis” using a driving path macro by Project Widgets (https://www.projectwidgets.com/products/DrivingPathWidget.cfm) to define my Primary Critical Path, then take that primary end-deliverable and perform a “Sensitivity Analysis” comprised of temporarily setting its deadline to 1 or 2 months earlier than finish date; thereby causing effected tasks to go-critical; Then I perform a “Total Slack analysis”, looking for “families” of tasks with the lowest TS (highest negative TS) and flag them as CP2, etc. Hope this helps!
