Hi Boulekhssaim

You are quite correct that you use the budget quantities (BOQ) to generate man hours from standard outputs.

The problem is that the BOQ items never align with the bar chart activities so they have to be summarised into totals that represent the chart.

This is relatively simple in Lotus 123 but in Excell it is a bit more complicated.

To start you need to have the budget quantities in one sheet and the bar chart activities in another.

The bar chart activities will have a unique number in the left hand column for each activity.

This unique number is then set against each element in the budget that corresponds with the bar chart.

In Lotus you can then do a simple Dsum formula to add all the hours that correspond to each number nad transfer them to the barchart.

In excell you need to sort the schedule into the number groups and then =sum each block which can then be transferred to the barchart.

It gets a little more complex when in a multi storey project and you have 20 activities for plaster and they are all measured together.

Now you have to set up a matrix in another sheet which sets down each floor and a pro rata allocation of quantities.

This ratio is then applied to the total plaster hours and allocated to each storey in your programme.

If you are using PowerProject then the resource hours can be cut and pasted in 5 seconds - in P3 however you have an afternoons work typing them all in.

The next step is to assign gang sizes and set up the resource modelling system to generate durations.

Using Lotus and PowerProject I can do a multi storey projevt in about 3 hours - P3 would take me 3 days - thank you Asta Development for the P3 > PowerProject conversion facility.

Best regards

Mike Testro