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Feb

P6 Version 20.12 Released

Categories: Activity Relationships, P6 Calendars, P6 Professional, Primavera Resources, Resources, Schedule Options, SQLIte

Tags: dissolve activities, Financial Periods, Primavera P6 Professional, Relationship Lag, schedule options

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by Bill Pepoon

Oracle released Version 20.12 of Primavera Professional Project Management in December 2020. If you have not upgraded P6 recently, here are some of the most salient improvements since 2018:

Dissolve Activities With Or Without Lag: You can choose whether or not to retain lag when dissolving activities using the Retain lag setting in the Calculations tab of the User Preferences Dialog. If you choose to retain lag, the lag from the dissolved activity's predecessor relationship will be added to that of its successor relationship and applied to the new relationship. (Version 19.5)

Improvements to Stored Images Functionality: Multiple images can be uploaded at the same time. (Version 19.7)

Project Code Maximum Length Changed: The maximum length for Project Codes in PPM databases is 60 characters. (Version 19.7)

Scheduling and Leveling Options Can Be Exported to and Imported From Primavera XML: When you export projects to Primavera XML format, scheduling and leveling options are included. When importing the Primavera XML file, you can choose whether to import with the Update Existing or Keep Existing import actions against the scheduling and leveling options. (Version 19.8)

Allow or Restrict Access to Resources From Multiple Parent Resources: You can select up to five resources when defining which resources a user can access. The user can access and use the selected resources and all child resources of the selected resources. (Version 19.9)

Choose to Export Primavera XML Files Into a Compressed File: When you export projects in Primavera XML format you can choose to have the files exported to a single compressed file in .zip format. (Version 19.10)

Add Comments About Relationships: Add the Comments column in the Relationships detail window to add extra information about the relationship, for example to explain the need for lag assigned to the relationship or the need for the relationship itself. Relationship comments are plain text and can be up to 250 characters long. This is my favorite new feature. (Version 20.4)

Categorize and Organize Activities and Assignments Using Role Codes: With potentially hundreds of roles being used across an enterprise of projects, role codes provide another method for filtering the roles you need to access quickly, or for grouping, sorting, and filtering roles and role assignments. (Version 20.6)

Improved Control of Options When Scheduling Multiple Projects: In the Scheduling Options dialog box, you can select which of the open projects options will be used when you schedule multiple projects. In the Level Resources dialog box, you can select which of the open projects leveling options will be used when you level multiple projects. You can generate scheduling and leveling log files as HTML files. (Version 20.6)

Fill Down and Fill Across Quickly in the Resource Assignment Spreadsheet: You can fill data on the Resource Assignment Spreadsheet window from shortcut (right click) menu. (Version 20.8)

Fill Down Multiple Cells in the Resource Usage Spreadsheet of the Activities View: You can fill data on the Resource Usage Spreadsheet pane from several cells simultaneously. Select multiple contiguous cells by holding down shift while clicking the first and last cells in the range, then select the rows to copy to using either shift and click (to select contiguous rows) or Ctrl and click (to select separate rows), then right click to select the Fill Down menu item. (Version 20.9)

Financial Period Calendars Allow You to Use Different Financial Periods for Different Projects: You can create multiple financial period calendars with different periods. The different financial period calendars can have different durations as well as different start and end dates to each period. You can create new financial period calendars from scratch or duplicate an existing calendar as the basis for a new financial period calendar. (Version 20.10)

Copy Dates to Other Assignments Using Fill Down in Resource Usage: You can use fill down to populate dates in the Resource Usage Spreadsheet of the Activities window of P6 Professional. Fill down options for start and finish dates are available both in the Activity Resource Assignments section and the spreadsheet columns. (Version 20.10)

Easily See Exact Values for Histogram Bars: You can select to view the values for bars on histograms and stacked histograms in the options for the Activity Usage Profile, Resource Usage Profile, and Tracking View. (Version 20.10)

Categorize and Organize Assignments Using Codes: With potentially many thousands of active resource and role assignments across hundreds of projects, assignment codes provide another method for grouping, sorting, and filtering the assignments you need to access quickly. (Version 20.11)

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Mar

The Practical Professor

Categories: Construction Science, Critical Path, Databases, Live Online P6 Training, Oracle Gold Partner, P6 Professional, Primavera P6, Primavera Resources, Primavera software, Primavera Training

Tags: Construction Science, In-Person P6 Training. P6 software, Live Online P6 Training, On Demand P6 Training, P6 database, Primavera P6 Training

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by Bill Pepoon

My wife and I have a vacation home in Truckee, California. Whenever we are up there we get together with a couple who have a second home just two doors down from ours. During our last visit we met the wife's charming mother for the first time. After several hours of pleasantries she asked me a slightly odd question:

"Are you a professor?"

"No", I replied. "But I do teach scheduling and software classes."

She went on to explain that she thought I spoke very clearly and explained my thoughts in a logical, concise manner. So her comment about my being a professor was certainly meant as a compliment. She was not a native English speaker, and she complained that her son-in-law speaks much too quickly. On the other hand, I had no trouble understanding her at all.

And it occurred to me that learning a language is a lot like learning how to schedule projects or to use scheduling software.

Most of us who have tried to learn another language have been exposed to those classes where you put on a pair of headsets and repeat various phrases in the new language like, "that is a very big fish!"

Which is only helpful if you happen to encounter someone holding a large fish.

Okay, so these classes do teach more useful phrases and even I have managed to order hot chocolate in Rome without feeling like a complete dolt. Tourist, yes. Idiot? As they say in Italian, "no".

Still, there is nothing that quite prepares you for going to another country and trying to strike up a conversation with a local. You have no control over what they are going to say. The answer is not in your handy phrase book. They may also speak with a dialect that is unfamiliar. What you learn has to have a practical application to your situation.

One of the criticisms of many engineering programs at universities is that students spend their first three years learning theory without any explanation as to why and how they will be applying this knowledge in the real world. I switched majors from Civil Engineering to Construction Science because of my own doubt about how I would use my degree. Differential equations seemed irrelevant to someone planning to take over the family construction company.

The dilemma for a university professor, however, is that students are incapable of providing much feedback other than demonstrating their retention of knowledge. It is not like one of the students is going to say, "I am planning to build clean water facilities in remote locations with no power grid, so what are the best practices?" The professor teaches a standard curriculum which should cover "all the bases", so to speak, and the students do not know enough to ask questions.

When I teach scheduling and Primavera P6 classes, however, nearly all of my "students" are professionals who have several years of experience and who also have particular expectations. They are all about "what can Primavera P6 do for me?" This is why Oracle refers to its partners like ours as "solution providers". Anyone who has used Primavera P6 knows that it is very powerful. But different companies and different industries have their own unique demands.

Case in point. During a recent private training session for a major company we discussed several issues. There are short, turnaround, projects that are over very quickly and for this reason the duration format is hours, meaning the activity durations are expressed in hours. But the construction projects take much longer, so the preferred duration format is days. So within the same company not all schedules are built the same way.

Pro Tip: it matters to the instructor whether the student will be sharing a database with other users. The Administrator of the program has control over certain parameters such as Earned Value, which means that all users are subject to the same conditions.

We also discussed how the turnaround projects use "pull-planning" to establish the optimal dates for each activity, the construction projects follow a more traditional Critical Path Method schedule whereby some activities have float. With pull-planning you are essentially looking at only the "late" dates in a CPM schedule; finishing early is not a goal or even desirable.

What about resources? In this case, the company does track labor and equipment (what P6 labels as "nonlabor") but does not cost-load its schedules. I often warn my clients that when discussing resources, output determines input. What type of reports and charts do you expect P6 to produce? Do you track individuals or crews? Will actual hours or costs be inputted? This particular company also plans to integrate P6 with another planning program, which affects how the schedule should be built inside P6.

The fact is, none of my private group training classes are "typical". My clients are sophisticated companies that have been planning and scheduling for years. But they might be switching over to P6 or looking for "best practices" when using P6. It is pretty common for someone with P6 experience to say to me, "P6 can also do that?" Well, when you use P6 nearly every day of the year you do tend to learn a few tricks. It also helps to be an Oracle partner with unlimited access to Oracle engineers.

While I do occasionally have people in my classes who are quite new to scheduling, I am otherwise not some university professor pouring knowledge into somewhat empty vessels. And in private group classes we have the opportunity to discuss corporate preferences as well as my own. This is where videos alone are not the best form of training. Besides not being able to ask questions, there is no collaboration between instructor and pupil.

Ultimately, just learning how to use a software program is not enough. Anyone with P6 experience can tell you what a button does when you push it. Whether you should be pushing the button at all is harder to learn without the guidance of someone who has practical experience with the program. Any amateur can create some videos and proclaim themselves an "expert" on P6, but those of us who do this full-time are not fooled.

Our firm does offer On Demand (i.e. video) training, but we back this up with live online and in-person training sessions. In addition, we also offer private (custom) training to anyone who wants to take their knowledge of scheduling and P6 to the next level. Why sit through a regular training session when you can focus on your needs with one of the most experienced schedulers in the United States?

I have great respect for universities, having a Masters degree myself, and I studied the Critical Path Method of scheduling during my undergraduate days at Kansas State University. I learned the practical side of CPM scheduling, however, working alongside experienced schedulers. It occurred to me, for example, that no one explained how to properly update a schedule at university. Other schedulers showed me what to do.

And now I would like to pass along that knowledge to you!

Sep

The Resource I Never Use

Categories: P6 EPPM, P6 Professional, P6 Tricks, Primavera Resources

Tags: Primavera P6, Resources

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by Bill Pepoon

Resources add "weight" to a schedule. That is to say, resources can tell us the effort - in costs and/or hours - required to perform a task. Once resources have been added to an activity we now realize that tasks with similar durations are not so similar when the effort is considered.

Back in the early 1980s I would sometimes be asked by owner representatives to explain how many people were required each day in order to stay on schedule. I was using a proprietary scheduling program running on a mainframe computer in those days. It was a nice little program based on the Activity-on-Arrow (AOA) method of scheduling. But it was not capable of doing much with resources other than assign a cost value to each task.

In a parallel scheduling universe, however, Primavera Systems was offering the ability to budget and track both costs and units. The firm I worked threw in the towel in the face of a better product and switched over fully to Primavera in 1987. That was a good decision but at the time there were other scheduling programs to consider. Proximity might have helped. Our company's headquarters were across the Delaware River from Primavera Systems.

It might surprise schedulers who nearly always resource-load their schedules that a large percentage of companies - at least in the United States - rarely do so. The reasoning is often that it takes too much time or exposes confidential information. I know a lot of contractors do not want anyone knowing how many labor hours were figured into their projects.

Not knowing how many labor hours are required by the project once led to an awkward exchange with an opposing attorney during my testimony in a construction dispute:

Attorney: "Mr. Pepoon, how many people would have been required to perform this task that we are looking at right now?"

Me: "Enough people to perform the task within the planned duration."

Attorney: "But how many people would that be, exactly?"

Me: "The proper number to perform the task within the allotted time."

It sounded like a bad comedy skit, but of course I could not answer a perfectly relevant question because my client did not resource-load the schedule. And the reality is that when a subcontractor is responsible for the work the general contractor usually can't verify the duration either. He simply trusts that the subcontractor knows best.

The people performing the task would presumably know how long it takes. But no one else can verify this without knowing the required effort. Then why does this still happen? Well, general contractors pass on a lot of the risk (i.e. scope of work) to subcontractors and can always "sue the bastards" if they fail to meet the schedule. Of course, owners will then sue the general contractors for not controlling their subcontractors. Nobody will be happy.

Still, there is one resource I refuse to use - material. Anyone familiar with Primavera P6 understands that there are three types of resources: labor, nonlabor, and material. Nonlabor is mostly used for equipment, but I have another use for it as well. The trouble with a material resource is that Primavera P6 only tracks costs, not units. With labor and nonlabor resources the choices are to track units, costs, or both.

From my perspective, tracking material could be very useful. If I have moved 50 cubic yards of dirt and there is a total of 100 cubic yards, then certainly one-half of the work is complete. (I should also consider how long it took to complete one-half of the work, because productivity is important as well). This is production-based scheduling, but it is simply not possible with a material resource.

Thankfully, there is a workaround. Instead of using a material resource, why not use nonlabor instead? If it's not labor it can be pretty much anything, right? So nonlabor can be plumbing fixtures, dirt, gypsum board, conduit, or anything else we want to track. I have even used a nonlabor resource to track drawings being produced by the design team.

Both labor and nonlabor resources use "units" as the nominal description. Only material resources can have other labels, but we can easily create our own definitions.

For plumbing fixtures the unit can be "each", cubic yards for dirt, square feet for gypsum board, and linear feet for conduit. Each type of material will of course require its own unique nonlabor resource. I also indicate the real unit of measure in the description, such as "Dirt (Cubic Yards)" to emphasize the point.

I also do not show the unit label for these nonlabor resources because Primavera P6 would put "hours" on all of my nonlabor resources (Edit > User Preferences > Time Units). One other thing. When printing resource charts I do not lump nonlabor resources together because they are not the same materials at all, but this would be true for equipment as well.

Ultimately, we must decide what level of detail is required when adding resources. Minor amounts of material may not warrant much scrutiny. The desired output determines the level of input required. For example, do we need to track different sizes of piping or can they be lumped together? Too much detail is often as bad as not enough detail.

Jul

Export Resources without Cost Data

Categories: Primavera P6, Primavera Resources

Tags: Primavera P6, Primavera Resources, Primavera XER, XER

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by Bill Pepoon

The purpose of exporting Primavera P6 files in “XER” format is to transmit all of the project data to another database. In many cases we are not looking to exclude any data. So how do we avoid sharing sensitive cost data with other parties? Contractors may not want owners, subcontractors and other parties to have access to this proprietary information.

There are two options for not sharing cost data. One option is to delete resource assignments altogether. We do this by copying the schedule inside Primavera P6 and un-checking the “Resource & Role Assignments box, as seen below:

While this option works perfectly well, the recipient will see no resources or roles in the schedule. What if we want the recipient of this file to be able to see the resource units but not the unit prices? This requires a different approach. Option 2 involves creating a new user and associated user profile who is not allowed to view cost data. When this user exports the file the resource rates will disappear but the resource assignments and units will remain intact.

First, we create a new user and label that person in such a way that we remember why this user was created in the first place. Go to Admin → Users. Below, I have added a new user with the name “Export User”:

Note that I have given this new user access to every project in my database by assigning this user to the highest level in the Organization Breakdown Structure (OBS). This is not absolutely necessary but it does make it easier to export any project without cost data.

Second, we need to assign the new user a Project Profile that excludes the ability to “View Project Costs/Financials”. Go to Admin → Security Profiles and select Project Profiles. In the screenshot below I have added a new Project Profile, “No Costs Exported”:

Also, I gave this new user no ability to modify schedules because the only purpose of this user is to export projects sans cost data. As soon as the project has been exported I will log back in using my normal user name.

Now we are ready to export a project with cost data. Keep in mind that you will need to log in as the new user first!

Questions or comments? Please feel free to contact me.