Hi everyone,

I totally agree with you Gary,the number of activities is not a sufficient indication of a good detailed and structured schedule...
Recently, I got to review a schedule of more than 5 thousand activities for a tower building...I found out that it was built up with a copy & paste of 1 typical floor, repeated in all 30 floors of the building...It was a catastrophic schedule and I prefered having 50 well done activities instead of these 5,000...
Also, I find ridiculous to see in offer advertisement for Planning jobs, to seek for Planners who can manage more than "x" thousands of activities and level "y" of schedules...These numbers of activities and levels should not be considered as a unit of measuring proffesionalism and competency of Planners...The situation gets more funny when Planners are competing with each others in finding out who did the longer schedule or to which extent the WBS was broken down; may be we’ll put the winner in Guiness Book...If Software gives you the opportunity to have thousands of activties, this does not mean that it enforces you to increase your number of activities...
Usually, Contractors submit a preliminary schedule after a short period from the start of the Project...This schedule will be reviewed and get the consent from the Engineer/the Client...It is only after getting enough information (i.e. E/M), new inputs, different conditions, new strategy, etc. that the Contractor is asked to develop and detail more the consented schedule, therefore increasing number of activities...It is up to Engineer/Client to specify the areas or disciplines to be more elaborated as it is not always to the benefit of the Contractor to detail more and add his activities...

Regards,
J.S. Daniel

Charlie,

There you go making presumptions in your posting that are ill-informed and wrong.

You say that I have not done this kind of planning detail because of the nature of my work. What qualifies you to say this? You simply don’t know what I type of planning I have done.

Please do not cast doubts on anybodies planning experience, including mine, unless you are very sure of your facts.

For the record, I have produced programmes of 40,000 activities. Despite the fact that you obviously believe I have not worked for a contractor, I have.

There are many different ways of planning – each is dependant upon the particular circumstances. A programme of 50 activities can be just as valid as one with 40,000.

Regards,

Gary.

Hi Gary,

Please consider the basis of my opinion, the project description.

You have not done this kind of planning details because of the nature of your work.

But I did because I work in the contractor side.

If you were not there, then, you don’t know.

Ask Vladimir, he did more than 40,000 activities with matching simulations.

Cheers,

Charlie

Charlie,

I am truly staggered by your comments in post #69…

“Planning need detailed activities to get hold of the overall situation”.

And

“For 50 activities, it will be a planning catastrophe. Planning with below 5,000 activities is playing or horsing around. Planning with more than 20,000 activities is reasonable”.

Whilst I fully accept that some situations need to have an enormous number of activities on their schedules / programmes, it must be wrong to say that planning with less than 5000 activities is playing or horsing around. Consider the person who develops the overall first schedule/programme on a project. They are trying to establish the overall timeframe and constraints for the project and often this needs to be done very quickly. Under these circumstances, which some might consider to be the most important or influential stage in developing a programme, it would be near impossible to develop 5,000 activities. In fact, this amount would render the purpose of the programme to be lost – that is, to rapidly communicate the overall timescale and stages of a project.

Often planners do produce 50 activity programmes. They do so deliberately and carefully, for that is exactly what is required.

Please try to be a little more considered in your postings! The quantity of activities in a programme is not the only judge of its quality.

Gary.

Multi target

In P3e you can display unto 1 current and 3 baseline schedule and attach 50 different baseline for comparison

Cheers

Alex

We recommend to set at least four targets:
1) Project Team Target - very tight, optimistic.
2) Project Management Team Target that includes calculated contingency reserve.
3) Management Target that includes both contingency and management reserves.
4. Contract Target that includes profit or any other additional reserves.
Spider Projet can show at the same lines of the Gantt Chart:
1) critial schedule - backward schedule from the Project Management Team target dates,
2) current schedule and
3) any other schedule that is chosen to compare with. One option - baseline schedule, but you can also compare with the project schedule that existed in any time in the past (week ago, month ago, etc.) or any other target schedule.
So at any time you can see at the same lines only three schedules and not more.
You can also see trends of any project parameters like cost, finish date, success probabilities for all targets you defined, etc. at the diagrams below the Gantt Chart.
Regards,
Vladimir

To Clive Randall:
Excuse me for the late reply, I was abroad where had limited access to the Internet.
You are absolutely right. In most long projects it does not make sense to plan in details what will be done on the coming years. And yes, pipeline construction projects usually have necessary documentation before construction phase is started.
In the long projects we use rolling wave approach and not only because we don’t have enough information about future works but also for making the model less complex. Even if it is easy to simulate future works it is not practical. For an example in the construction of high buildings we simulated the influence of schedule deviations in the current floor to the schedules of higher floors construction. Usually after 4 or 5 floors the influence of these deviations becomes vary low. So we plan in details the construction of the nearest 5 floors and other floors exist in the model as corresponding activities linked with the detailed schedule. The size of the model is growing with time but the number of activities that are planned in details remains near the same. To the end of the project you will have the largest model.
In pipeline construction you need to plan which resources will be needed at any time because these resources are heavy and expensive and shall be moved to the construction site. It makes sense to simulate the whole construction in details as soon as the necessary information is available.
Regards,
Vladimir

Hi Raja & Bill,

Is it possible to show four (4) bars in a row in your 15K-activity plan?

1st bar - current (updated)

2nd bar - target (updated)

3rd bar - plain target

4th bar - recovery schedule

in any planning tool please??? (not drafting tool)

p.s. I have to ask this in the other section but it was locked by another bar....

Bill
I am suprised you didnt make any comments about my assumtions regarding shutdown work
Same question to you Vladimir was that correct about pipelines or not.

And agree withPhilip.

BUT WITH THE FOLLOWING CAVATS

If a planner had only one thing to do, planning, then fine. he can work up to 35000 activities, but the confort zone is 15k activities.
PROVIDED, he does not have to waste time attending meetings, answerng quires, making what if schedules, working out cost reports, etc etc etc.

Cheers bill

Planning need detailed activities to get hold of the overall situation.

In building works, the plan can have a simple fragnet of ten activities per floor.

This fragnet can easily generate thousand of activities the moment it will be distributed into zone-by-zone, area-by-area, level-by-level approach in work breakdown structure.

You can imagine this if you will start planning for more than 15 numbers of mopre than 15-storey high towers clustered in an 8 level basement, with bored piling foundation including dewatering, hybrid or composite structures of steel and concrete, with first class architectural interior finishes and exterior finishes (interior: marble tiles, capentry works, etc. and exterior: stone cladding and aluminium cladding).

For 50 activities, it will be a planning catastrophe. Planning with below 5,000 activities is playing or horsing around. Planning with more than 20,00 activities is reasonable.

Regards,

Hi Stephen!
Glad to meet you here.
I agree with all you wrote, thank you for support.
I think that it may be of interest to discuss in details (not in this thread) schedule optimization criteria. You mentioned the cost of the delay. Usually we implement this approach - schedule is optimized taking into account cost of the day of finish delay.
Vladimir

Vladimir,

Sorry for the late response, as i dont have time to read the forum everyday, especially if you are managing 40,000 activities in your hands. (just kidding Vladimir) Leveling is essential when you are working with a contractor. This is a necessary exercise both for the commercial side and the practical side of construction, of course nobody wants big bumps and sudden drops. An ideal schedule should be smooth and efficient. Efficient use of resources should be a must excercise in planning.

Regards,
Daniel

Spider Project is Russian software. You can try its Demo downloading from http://www.spiderproject.ru/enter.php?ver=prof&lang=eng
I can describe some additional features of Open Plan and Spider Project useful for true project performance simulation but I don’t think that it is proper in this thread.
Regards,
Vladimir

Thank you, Philip.
I’ll try.
Vladimir

Allan,
I agree that resource levelling is not wide spread. It is much easier to create high level schedules and suggest site managers to make it real. Resource loaded schedules are in use in the companies where top management knows what to demand from the project planners and project management software.
I don’t agree with your statement that P3 is the only credible software for dealing with resources. Open Plan has more capabilities and our Spider Project is much more powerful and functional. But P3e and MS Project are not reliable and sometimes produce funny results (especially MS Project).
I think that real project management (and any kind of management) is resource management. And project management software is properly used when it simulates project performance and is able to answer any of what if question. Besides it shall try to optimize resource usage. And what I don’t like in P3, Open Plan and other PM software that is used by most project planners in this forum - these packages don’t even try to optimize resource constrained schedules. They chose easy solution - to suggest their users to choose any levelling criteria and that’s all. Spider Project tries to use computer power to calculate better schedules and usually its resource constrained schedules are much shorter than produced by other planning software. Another problem that is ignored by P3 - taking into consideration financial and supply constraints (cost and material levelling is not supported).

In few words - resource constrained schedules are rare and usually they show the maturity of the project management in the organization especially when it used on the portfolio level.

You are right that this discussion may belong to a separate thread.

Vladimir

Sigfred and Philip,
I think that leveling is a key to this discussion. You cannot decide what number of activities is needed if it is necessary to simulate resource work. If your goal is to create project schedule that takes into account resource, financing and supply restrictions then the number of schedule activities is dictated by technologies you need to simulate and it is not a subject for discussions.
Vladimir

Vladimir,

Yes I do level. Some of the reasons are:

1. To finalize the execution program.
2. I used the resource leveling report to use it as basis to prepare the manpower schedule, equipment and procurement schedule.
3. To make resource "what if" scenarios.

I think this is one thing that differentiate scheduling/strategic planners with scheduling/strategic/resource planners.

Some people tend to think that resource planning is microplanning. I don’t think so. This is where the added value comes in for planners.

As a guideline, a good program/schedule should include the following:

> The programme should reflect the full scope of work.
> Contractual Milestones, Key Dates and interfaces with other contracts
> Statutory permits and licensing.
> Submissions and approval process (Shop Drwgs, Materials, Etc.)
> Procurement, manufacture and delivery of Materials, especially long lead items.(including owner supplied materials)
> Any special items of complexity
> Test and adjust

Of course a good schedule should be resource loaded. These should include your basis and assumptions and as a minimum it should include quantities and production rates for major commodities and the resources required to achieved those rates.

Now going back to the number of activities issue, as long as you have covered the above as a minimum, then you have a good program. In project management, different levels of people focus on different levels of goals or sub-goals. As a Planner or should I say a good Planner should focus on major goals and give a chance and let others worry about the sub-goals. It’s simply impossible to be succesful if you try and apply micro-managing and micro-scheduling in your project. Let everyone do their share, be creative and innovative and keep them focus on the major goals.

Cheers,
Daniel

Phillip,

My comment on data input technicians was not scathing. That is unfair. I was merely commenting that vast programmes need someone dedicated to track them full time. That person probably cannot also attend all meetings, interface with the team individuals, and attend site as well. That is not to say that a planning technician to do such data input does not have a place.

I think we can reasonably agree to disagree. I did state that in my original post that there is an element of judgement call in selecting the number of activities.

Tot siens,

Allan

In response to Phillip, I understand we have diferent aproaches to planning. Your approach is clearly that with 6000 drawings there needs to be a corresponding amount of tasks. In fact I have found even in complex fabrications that QA/QC Dept, and CAD unit manage all the drawings. As a planner I manage at a higher level. Issued for Construction Phase 1, may have over 1000 drawngs, but this will only account for perhaps 10 milestones that are linked to follow on construction activities.

I dont understand why distilling many complex drawings into their respective tasks is simplistic. It is just making sense of a huge amount of information into a workable format. Many of my clients would not be happy to pay a planning engineer good money to slavishly list such unnecessary detail.

I see there are perhaps two levels of planning in discussion here. Planning Engineers who interface with key project staff and keep a real world view, and Planning Technicians whose sole job is to input data.

It seems to me that there are different approaches to project scheduling.

We create project schedule to simulate project performance and that is why we simulate resource work. The schedules we create shall help to answer numerous “what if” questions. In particular the schedule is used for optimizing resource quantities. In particular we advise what numbers of excavators and other machines are needed to finish pipeline construction on time. To be able to answer these questions it is necessary to simulate resource work and technological dependencies that is impossible if the project model is not detailed. In Caspian pipeline construction project we simulated the work of 1145 resource types. It is not easy and cheap to move heavy machines and people to the construction site that is far away. Project performance simulation helps to save money – it is cheaper and easier to create the detailed schedule and to produce reliable estimates than to make real life errors.

I think that making it simple means that resource work is not simulated. And this is another approach that has other purposes.

Philip

One has to be pragmatic about things - of course, there must be somewhere in between but in general the modus operandi of K.I.S.S. should be adopted purely for expediency and ease of handling with regard to updating & reporting.

Believe me, that in general we do not have an engineering fraternity that wants to wade through reams of planning reports just to show them how their inputs are affecting projects as a whole - something very simple is all that is required and in any case the planner is the "eyes and crystal ball gazer" who is in constant dialogue with the project team at all levels and who speaks very loudly when anything is seen to be going off the rails.

We are not all working on a job that has 6000 drawings - I take it that they are all different drawings and not compounded by various other views of the same subject that can reduce the number you speak of significantly - other panning engineers may be working on many projects that have 50 to 100 drawings but even then, I still adopt the K.I.S.S approach until it is absolutely necessary to break planning down into greater detail - however, I endeavour to maintain an approach that is always manageable and not an Albatross round the neck

At last sense prevails - I totally agree with what Allan & Gary have said & their statements are in line with what I wrote on the subject at an earlier date

WHY MAKE MOUNTAINS OUT OF MOLEHILLS ?

K.I.S.S

The key to managing mega projects with many contracts/packages is to have a common coding structure incorporated in your contract and a common scheduling software like P3. This way, each contractor can update their respective programs and merge the files seamlessly into one to get the whole picture. There maybe some manipulation required with interfaces, again the key is to identify those interface and set-up link points or milestones to make the whole process easy.

Regards,
Daniel

Several words about creating large schedules.
1) Schedules are large just because they include many activities. Activity is a portion of work that may be done by some resource team, use certain materials, has reasonable duration that corresponds with the period of schedule analysis. So the number of activities depends on resource usage in your schedule and not on your wishes.
2) Usually large schedules include many similar work packages. We call them typical fragnets or fragments. Schedule development usually starts with the development of the project typical fragnets if they are not ready for use. If your organization performs similar projects then most project fragnets shall be already developed and stored in the corporate fragnet library. Fragnets are usually thoroughly developed (with resource team, material and cost assignments) for some typical work volume (1 km, 100 m3 or something like that). Creating WBS you stop decomposition at the fragnet’s level. Inserting fragnets you adjust fragnet volumes and create project model.
Fragnet library is usually supported by project reference-books or databases like resource productivity on typical assignments, material consumption per volume unit on typical works, unit costs, etc.
So having developed fragnet library you will not spend much time and effort creating one more schedule – only those works that have no prototypes in fragnet library need to be modeled.
Example – any pipeline consists of linear parts, road and river crossings, roads construction, etc. If you got the description of the line research results then creating very large schedules is easy – you just add corresponding fragnets (800m of the line part, then 40m road crossing, then another 1400m, then …). 10000 tasks schedule is created in two days (real life experience!).
3) Actual data usually are entered by those who are responsible for their accuracy. If these data are entered by project planners then there is a need to enter actual data for 100 – 300 activities in a week. It is not easy but it is not impossible.

Having worked with Owner/Project Managers and Contractors, I would like to share my views with you on the subject. I believed there are no parameters on the number of activities on a project. This will vary from project to project depending on the contract and the people who are managing the project. The numbers will also depend if you are with the Owner/Project Manager or the Contractor side. The important thing is identifying the major activities from engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning and setting-up and establishing the control mechanisms of the project. In other words having a good plan and control in place. Generally the more detail the better, however, you need to be practical as possible to make it manageable. Detailing or further breakdown can come later as the project progresses. The important thing is you have identified those activites earlier and made allowance for them in your program.

Regards,
Daniel

Vladimir, to the extent that different software packages may potentially have different reporting limitations on the ability to disseminate large volumes of information appropriately, I would disagree with you. However, in a general sense I do agree that this discussion should be moved to the more general Planning & Scheduling forum to get a broader perspective. Moving it now...

Bernard Ertl
ATC Professional Shutdown / Turnaround Management System

Here in UAE (booming Dubai) we have up to 2000 activites for every project, so it is better to have no of activites per planner then to show how much total you operate on multi projects with your big companies.

We have average 500 to 1000 activites per project and weekly update around 50 activites. This is for one planner and one day operation. Project duration is 1 or 2 years. First 3-4 months are revisions from 0 to 3 or 4 so planners are full time on projects sites.

So please post your valuable data from this view.
Thanks and regards to all!

Dragan Ilic
besix.com

Hi Bernard and Vladimir,

I agree with both of you. The point being that the schedule is there to drive the job, hence detail to assist the supervision and roll ups for management.

Regards,

Philip

Philip,
I think that the difference in dimensions has an obvious explanation. If you want to simulate resource work you will need to have precise project model and a lot of activities.
I don’t support schedule level approach but it is like going from level 3 to level 4.
Do you agree?

Industry - construction of buildings
Typical project - 13 store building $8 mln - 2500 activities

Industry - pipeline construction
Project - 750 km pipeline - # of activities = 9000, # of resources - 1145

Industry - ship building
Project Phase - 1st year plan - # of activities = 18000

Industry - telecommunications
Project: construction of telecommunication network - year plan 18000 activities

Industry - software development - 600 - 1000 activities in middle sized project

Industry - Metallurgy - construction of the new plant - 40000 activities

For portfolio management the dimensions are much higher.

Industry: Industrial, Mining, Petrochem, Sports Facilities, etc

Value: $ 200 000 to $B 2

average no of activities: 7000 level 4
1000 level 3

Time span average: 9 Months

Hi Gary,

Still waiting for an answer on an earlier question.

Regards

Philip

Dear all,

This thread teaches us a number of things. Most importantly, it shows us that there are many ways of achieving the same goal – how to plan a project. It is clear that many of us undertake or planning and scheduling in different ways and at different levels of detail. None are the right way and none are the wrong way. It is just that we do it differently, be that by our own preference, or as Daniel says, the level of detail (no activity longer than one week duration) is sometimes dictated by the contract.

I am fascinated by the level of detail that some people create their plans in – for example, Kamran was involved in a 27 month project and had created a plan with over 40,000 activities. Let’s just think about that for a moment. Assuming an even spread of activities, that’s 1481 activities per month, or 344 per week. Whilst I know this calculation may not be correct because of the duration of activities, I just use it as an illustration. What surprises me here is not that us planners are able to work at this level of detail, but I worry about the people who receive these plans – the managers, supervisors and the like who then use them. I simply find it difficult to see how anybody can take in that level of detail and use it effectively. Bernard gives a good illustration of the problem when he quotes a project with a 6000 task schedule which took 7 hours to update, which they did every day. These poor people – both the schedulers and the recipients of the plan – they would have been on information overload, where simply managing the information took most of their time – how on earth can anybody be effective in this environment?

The differences in the level of detail also appears to be related to the type of project. I get the impression that those 40,000 activity projects are in the petrochem industry. Would I be correct in assuming that it is the norm for the work in this industry to be scheduled out in considerable detail? I had previously stated that the plans I produce are in the range of 500 – 1000 activities. I type of work I most often plan is the construction of buildings where there is a culture that the overall constructor produces an overall plan, and the sub-contractors for each specialist trade then produce their own detailed plans to fit within the constraints of my overall plan. In this way, I then only need to monitor and update 500 – 1000 activities. Perhaps this is the reason for the dramatic differences between the different views expressed in this thread.

Can I suggest something…? As contributors to the Planning Planet forums we don’t often make our views known in the context of the industry we individually work within. Yes, I know the forum show this against our names. How about some very short postings saying what number of activities we typically use, and what industry we work in and a typical project value. I will start it off.

Best wishes.



Gary France
Chairman
Planning Engineers Organisation

Hi Alexandre,

Where I come from it means "Keep it simple Stupid" :-)

Not meant in a bad way, but to prevent stupid ideas from evolving further.

Regards

Philip

Hi Daniel,

A specific example is a boiler, lets say the platen elements, where you may have four hundred butt welds, and lets say all of them in one smallish area, and with ten welders on the job. It is simple to progress, as each weld is worth ,25 %. What is the point in splitting the activity up, to create a multiple of shorter duration activities? I agree with having enough detail, but simply trying to stick to limited durations, for the sake of it, does not make sense to me.

Regards


Philip

Hi Daniel,

You make a good point, about limiting durations to a specific time, ie 1 week. I have had this problem before. If you have a specific activity, which use a single resource, that will last one month, how do you split it? However, how do you lump activities together with different resources, to minimise the number of activies? Maybe Gary can answer the latter question.

Regards

Philip

Hi Gary,

With regards to your earlier post, how do you prepare your detailed resource programme if you will limit the number of activities?

As a Planner/scheduler, I don’t see the point of doing your resource analysis using summary/hammock activities. If you’re referring only to scheduling of activities I may agree but to some extent only.

I am now working on my second airport project, the first one, we handled the construction and airport development and if you combine the total number of activities used, it is around 15,000 activities. Now I’m only handling Airport IT systems, we’ve got around 3500 activities excluding some roll waved plans for training and testing.

If you’re just coordinating with client representatives, executives, managers etc, its best to stick to high level programme. But if I will be dealing with the above I mentioned plus supervisors, engineers, cost engineers, procurement people, design coordinators, consultants, practically most of the key people of project management team, I would certainly will have a hard time managing and maintaining a not so detailed plan.

Cheers,

Se

Hi there,
I am involved in a 800M€ petrochemical EP project (27 months duration) with over 40,000 activities in which 300 resources are assigned to, in P3 environment. Since the project is consisting of 5 separate sub-projects, are handling with 2 distinct parties for basic and detail design and procurement, we are dealing with 10 sub-nets. (5 sub-projects defined for each party’s activities)
I don’t want to say this is very easy for updating especially in this occasion that planners are located in different task forces far from each other, but we are doing it in our side as detail designer with 1 planner for each sub-project (5 planners in total) and one senior planner for supervision/coordination, that is updating twice a month.
Again, it is not detailed to each bits and piece such as bolts & nuts. We have over 2100 itemized equipment and for each item we have fabrication and delivery activity because we are invoicing for each individual equipment and this is important to be able for planning our cash-flow with respect to the delivery time of each equipment (payment milestone) depending to the value of that item.
I suppose more important than qualification of the planner would be our real requirement and what we are expecting from our time schedule that of course depends very much to the type of contract. Whether Owner is going to pay us by progress or by milestones, for instance.
Anyhow, I agree with other guys that are saying limited activities with long durations will make it very difficult to calculate (not estimate) the real actual progress unless a well-organized performance measurement system is established if a repetitive kind of activity is taking place in all projects. (for example plant modeling)
kamran

Hi Guys,

I agree with Vladimir, that the number of activities should be dictated by the size and complexity of the project, and not by the capabilities of the planner. I have handled up to 35000 fully resourced activities, with the assistance of two junior planners, and normally most projects I have been involved in exceed 3500 activities, with the average around 5000. As a matter of interest in the 35000 activity programme, one activity for instance was the brickwork for ninety house and had a duration of three months, so it definitely was not down to nuts and bolts. I think it is a question of being properly organised. However, my answer to the original question is, it is dependent on the capabilities of the planner, but an average planner should be able to handle 5000 resourced activities in a project with a duration of one year.

I agree with Gary’s philosophy as to the number of activities that should be applied to any project - what is the point of increasing the number of activities unnecessarily provided that what has been displayed acurately covers the work that is intended to be done?

An experienced planner will have the knowledge to update the schedule taking into consideration all aspects of what has yet to be concluded within the activity & be able to report on any criticalities that have manifested themselves - there is absolutely no need to break a schedule up into a nuts and bolts scenario unless the work is related to shutdowns that require to have additional detail purely to ensure that work outages are minmised and that resources can be deployed super efficiently

Imagine if I was planning a mining project whose capital value was 500 million USD and I had 20,000 construction activities (my normal number would be around 1500 maximum)let alone a whole host of commissioning activities to boost that number significantly - that would be total overkill especially when durations per activity may be at a minimum of a week and the project had to be concluded in 24 months - the additional time having to be spent on creating & updating schedules would hinder and completely stiffle all other functions that I have to perform such as chairing meetings, writing & issuing minutes, regular site visits and liasons with contractors & suppliers

The only time when I can truly say that I have had up to 40,000 activities has been in power station construction where perhaps infrastructure and 6 x 360 meg units have been at various stages of construction and commissioning - belive me, there is no time to rest when being the only site planner for the client in such circumstances.

I suppose if finance was no object to the contractor or client, then additional planners could be employed to manage projects that have a multitude of activities listed in teh programme but from what I have been through in the last 40 years,these luxuries are not the norm and additional planners on projects has just not materialised to any great extent and one needs to become super smart to manage large projects on ones own hence the least number of activities created but yet still capable of holding the project together as far as all parameters of resource and cost are concerned would be my ultimate answer

Gary, you have my backing in what you have stated

Oh good. Some healthy debate.

Of course, the project plan should reflect the relevant detail of the work to be undertaken. However, I after 31 years of planning construction projects, I firmly believe that a project plan should be exactly that – a plan. Not a detailed list of every single activity to be undertaken, with activities of say a week each – that doesn’t allow an overview to be taken, neither does it properly utilise the skills of the other people you are working with. Call them subcontractors or specialists – they are exactly that – specialists and they should be able to plan their own work far better than a generalist planner can.

Ronald, I respect what you say about small projects vs. large projects. I would be interested to hear from you what you consider each to be. For me, a large project would be £500m ($850m) and that would generally be the construction of a building. For my overall project plan, I would rarely exceed 500 activities because of what I said earlier. I believe communicating the overall plan is vital and having a plan with, as Vladimir suggests, with 9000, 18000 or even 93000 activities is simply bewildering. I cannot understand how this would help – a planner should be able to give his or her professional opinion about how a project should be undertaken, not just being a software junkie. Controlling a project with that many activities means that a planner, or even a team of planners, more time is going to be spent inputting data, administering the network and the like. This would leave no time for what planners are really good at – creative and logical thinking.

Vladimir, do you think that having 104 activities on the critical path actually helps? I am not sure that this would help, for how can the user of the plan ever hope to understand all of that? Don’t you think it is better to have (say) 4 targets a year that everybody can aim at. For my part I do. In the construction of the buildings I plan, I would typically set out a date for foundations completion, structural frame completion, cladding start, watertight, start of plant installation, etc. These are the only key dates I want everybody to remember, so I make them very easy to remember – 1st of the month, Easter, Christmas etc. This helps the entire project team focus on simple key dates and to pull together to achieve them. I simply do not believe that can happen with a project plan with 9000, 18000 or 93000 activities.

What do others think – detailed and precise, or strategic and simple?

Gary France
Mace Limited

Gary,

This is just your opinion. While many of my small projects use 500 activities, most large projects spanning multiple years will easily require more that 1000 activities to describe properly. It is not the Scheduler’s decision. If no activity may be longer than 20 days and may only cover the work of one sub or work group, then the number of activities required is parentally a numerical function.

I generally feel that it depend a lot on the capability of the scheduler and the type of schedule and if the schedule is resourced and also is the schedule integrated with a accounting or job costing systems and finally are we doing EVPM.

Some of my previous examples are

I am quite happy with 4,000 to 6,000 unresourced activities in P3 and I go there often.

I found when I got to 10,000 fully resource with 12 resources and a weekly update for an 6 month schedule it got difficult.

When I was doing full EVPM with a weekly schedule importing and checking the actual hours from a timesheet system and cost for an accounting system with manual input and checking ETC in hours, cost and time for each task and the % Complete for hours, cost, time and deliverables, then about 200 was fine but in another schedule with 400-500 activities only worked only because we had good systems and disciplined people.

I have not had the pleasure of working with Primavera Enterprise in a large integrated system, I am looking forward to the experience!

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Book Publishers, Training & Consulting
www.eh.com.au