(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?
(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.
We have different labour rates in different financial years and we need to extract accurate time-phased costs from P6 (Release 7 SP4).
The labour rates per financial year have been setup against the resource for the applicable time period.
When we view the budgeted labour costs of each activity in the Assignments screen, the total cost of the activity resource assignment is correct, however the time-phased data per week/month/quarter etc is only the average! :(
eg FY1213 $500/hr for 100hrs = $50,000 & FY1314 $1000/hr for 100hrs = $100,000
Total cost for the activity resource assignment = $150,000 = which is correct :)
However when you look at the spread of budgeted labour cost per week/month/qtr ... it is just an average of $750/hr :(
Hence FY1213 is too high and FY1314 is too low :(
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My P6 Financial Periods are currently setup as x2 fortnights for each Financial Period.
As previously mentioned, the Financial Periods are also incorrect and just use an average when viewing the Budgeted Labour Cost in Resource Assignments.
(BTW I actually only need the correct labour cost per financial year but many activities overlap the financial year).
I don't get why you asked me to show a screenshot that shows the time-phased distribution by day/week/month/financial period with the time-phased cost and suddenly say Spider Project is not relevant to your P6 question if my posting can show it is possible for other software calculate the distributions without using averages but not for P6 when using discrete pre-defined financial periods.
Spider Project do not use averages for the determination of daily costs and is very easy to understand why. If your distribution period is one day and the am cost is 10 and the pm cost changes to 20 the average is 15 but if the resource works on am only it will correctly use 10 while if it works only on pm it will correctly use 20. It is not using averages otherwise it would use 15 for am as well as for pm work.
I do not believe P6 will be able to to get the above example right, but maybe you can prove me wrong. I suspect a pre-defined financial period of one day would not do it, perhaps an hourly financial period but for my example where the rate change happened at a fraction of an hour in the middle of the work-day it would not be enough. In any case working pre-defined financial periods of one day is impractical.
Thanks but the issue is pretty simple ... accessing the accurate time-phased labour cost using the correct labour rates (not just a time-phased average).
Spider Project is not relevant to my P6 question.
Any P6 tips would be appreciated :)
I use Spider Project.
It is just that the timescale of diagrams are limited to display a minimum time distribution of 6 minutes. If you go to the second a single minute would need 60 columns, a single hour would need 3600 columns a single 8 hour days would need 28,800 columns. I suppose such granularity while scrolling can be the cause of carpal tunnel syndrome.
You can get the same granularity for actual data if you have the stomach to enter actual data to the second.
You can schedule activities durations down to the minimum time unit allowed of 1 second which on the construction industry is too much granularity.
The software do not needs to use financial periods to figure it out exact distributions, it is simple algebra, if you can figure it out using a worksheet down to the second why not the software. The developers recognize you might need different of what you call financial periods for different jobs, for different locations but also for different phases within the same job. If you use a single financial period what will happen when start/end of the multiple financial periods do not match? What if you need to report a phase using a week starting on Wednesday, a phase starting on Friday and another on by-monthly periods? Use of pre-defined financial periods is poor mathematical model, not needed for such cumbersome thing. Multi-national businesses might need to report on different financial periods for different locations.
http://www.planningplanet.com/forums/spider-project/421013/new-spider-project-functionalities
I changed the model experimenting with it and soon will delete it as it, the new total of $3,891.00 is as shown on all the figures. It is the revised number that came out based on the changes I made.
Another need to get real cost distributions that cannot depend on discrete financial periods is when you have financial constraints and need to account for them. This is of particular importance to project Owners who must schedule their jobs based on availability of funds. I suppose that low end software that depends on financial periods is doomed to lack functionality for modeling financial constraints, a special constraint type for which traditional resource leveling is of no use.
As a scheduler on the Contractor's side I never used financial constraints but is not difficult to imagine the need by owners to manage financial constraints in their portfolios. The modeling might need in addition to financial constraints functionality other advanced features such as the production/consumption of resources as if some jobs are not started/performed within a period the funds are lost.
Hi Rafael,
Thanks for the detailed reply.
1. Using my defined Financial Periods in P6 v7 does not solve the issue. The resource assignment cost on the activity is still just averaged across the Financial Periods even though the labour rate has changed.
2. Splitting activities into segments would work in theory, but my schedules have thousands of activities and are progressed weekly. It would not be possible to re-split hundreds of activities every week.
3. Thanks for the screenshot. What software is that? It is not P6 v7. But in any case, your screenshot just shows a few things ... (a) you have different labour rates between some dates, (b) you have a graph of the different labour rates, (c) you have a total cost on the activity of $5,280.
4. Can you please show a screenshot that shows the $5,280 time-phased by day/week/month/financial period with the time-phased cost. We need to check if the first day/week/month/financial period = say 10hrs x $30/hr = $300 ... then the next day/week/month/financial period = say 10 x $45/hr = $450. But the problem is that I think you will find, that whilst the total cost is correct, an average labour rate is used across each day/week/month/financial period.
In the following example the rate changed at 07/18/2013 13:35:00
This means at 12 hrs the rate was $30.00 at 13 hrs the average rate was $36.25 [35*30/60+25*45/60] at 14 hrs the rate was $45.00. The software knows the exact rate to the second but because I am displaying hourly increments it displays the amount distributed to the hr increment. The software knows exactly but the timescale can only be expanded to 0.10 hours increments (6 min increments) which for me is enough granularity. LOL
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the tip. I've spent about 5 or 6 hours studying-up on Storing Period Data. Here is the progress ...
Presumably you are referring to storing the Financial Period Planned Value Cost which is viewable as columns in the Activities screen or from Reports. There were no fields in Assignments that looked relevant.
To store data in the Financial Period Planned Value Cost, it seems that I need to progress the data date and reschedule, then Store Period Performance, which then populates the Financial Period Planned Value Cost. It does not seem possible to capture the Planned Value Cost for the full project in advance. But I cannot really progress the detailed schedule in advance for every financial period.
Any further tips to obtain an accurate cash flow spend forecast (to avoid the averaging labour rate issue)?
Thanks
Matt ... Sydney :)
Dave
You will need to read up of Financial Periods and Store period data in P6 to solve this issue.
Regards
Paul E Harris
BSc Hons, Certified Cost Engineer, PRINCE2 Practitioner
Managing Director and President
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Australia
www.eh.com.au, www.eastwoodharris.com, www.primaskills.com.au and www.primavera.com.au
Project Control Consultants and Planning and scheduling software book and training material publishers
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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