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Resource Calendars

11 replies [Last post]
Sun, 2004-12-12 23:09
Drew Palmer
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All,

I am trying to represent cashflow forecasts in P3 and think I need a quick lesson in resource calendars and activity types.

In the simplest case, I have a 12 month activity which spans 2 financial years (start Jan 05, complete Dec 05). The cashflow forecast for this activity is FY04/05 - $200M, FY05/06 - $500M.

I’ve been experimenting with creating separate resources for each financial year and assigning a resource calendar to each resource which limits working time to that specific financial year.

Conceptually I thought this was the answer, but P3 does not agree. In this setup I find that each resource is spread across the entire activity – regardless of the defined resource working time.

I’ve tried changing the activity type to ‘independent’, and using driving resources, but this disturbs the activity duration and doesn’t produce the desired response.

Any corrections to my method, or suggested alternatives, would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
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Replies

Sat, 2004-12-18 01:30
#1
Jaco Stadler
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Have you made the Activity Type independent.
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Fri, 2004-12-17 02:29
#2
Paul Harris
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Joined: 11 Apr 2001
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Drew

Resource calendars only work on quantities not costs, so you may have applied a cost without a quantity and when you say disturbed the duration I take you mean set it to zero.

When you use resource calendars for cash flowing you need to assign a quantity, I usually use 1 resource unit to equal $1.00 or $1,000.00

The disadvantage of using a monthly calendar for cash flowing, and so I never do, is that you are not able to Hammock or WBS your cash flow activities over some detailed actual work activities of a project which is what I usually do. I also create the cash flow activities in a separate sub project so I can keep them away from prying eyes as cash flows are usually confidential.

Give me a call sometime after tomorrow, 04 1118 7701, as I am in KL at the moment, if you wish to discuss this a bit further. These techniques are a bit long winded to discuss in type.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Book Publishers, Training & Consulting
www.eh.com.au
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Thu, 2004-12-16 19:50
#3
Drew Palmer
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Joined: 9 Feb 2001
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Paul,

What you say is interesting, because Andrew and I worked on this offline and produced identical results, which were not what either of us expected.

So let me outline my specific situation in the hope that you can spot the flaw...

1. Project planning unit is months
2. I have a single, 12 month activity ’Test’ - this activity is type ’Independent’
3. I create a resource ’Dummy’ and assign it to activity ’Test’, this resource is allocated UPT (Month) of 1 (BQ = 12) and is marked as driving
4. I create a resource FY2005
5. I create a base calendar 04/05, which defines all months from Jan 2000 - Dec 2010 as non-working EXCEPT FY2005 (ie Jul 04 - Jun 05)
6. Calendar 04/05 is associated with resource FY2005
7. A cost of $500 is now assigned to activity test using resource FY2005
8. The project is now scheduled with a data date of 01 Jan 05.

By following this process I get these results:
Activity ES 01 Jan 05, EF 31 Dec 05, OD 12
Resource (Dummy) ES 01 Jan 05, EF 31 Dec 05
Resource (FY2005) ES 01 Jan 05, EF 31 Dec 05

The cost distribution shows a uniform spread of $42 per month for 12 months, my expected result would be costs of $83 per month for the first 6 months, and $0 per month for the remainder (as per the resource calendar).

Any ideas on what I’m missing, or why this result is being generated?

Drew
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Thu, 2004-12-16 08:59
#4
Paul Harris
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Andrew

I my opinion both P3 and MSP are very predicatable in the way they calculate, I understand exactly what they do and why. I find the P3 Inderpendent, Meeting and Task Types very reliable in the way they calculate. MSP has no equivalent of a Meeting Task.

MSP will produce a similar answer as P3 and will have the same calculation issues as I outlined in my previous posting. That is the the calculation issues sourounding the different number of days per month and the expectation of senior managers and accounting people to see the same expenditure per month for each task and not see a change in the monthly expenditure per month when a start date of a task is changed.

When one uses excel then the cost per month may be calculated and be the same for each month and not change as the number of days per month changes or as the start date for each task is changed. i.e. 6 months from Jan to Jun has a different number of days as from Jul to Dec.

The other issue with MSP is that 2 constraints may not be applied to a task and make the product calculate the duration of a task. So in MSP if the start date of a task is changed to a different month then the finish date has to be manually changed so it matches the end date of a month and may not be set by a second constraint. Using P3 one can place a start and end date on each task to make the task span the required months.

Lastly if the schedule is to be statused then MSP falls over completely as it does not recognise the data date in a way that allows a cash flow to be calculated accruately, after the end dates of months have been manually sorted out. When using multiple calendars, resources and updating a schedule I prefer the way P3 calculates. This is because P3 places Actuals in the past and ETCs in the future of the datadate. It is unfortunate that MSP has decided to have multiple datadates (to represent what all other products manage with one date) and it manages to place actuals in the future and ETCs in the past unless there is serious manual intervention. It also calculates the end date of an inprogress task from the Actual start plus the duration and not from the Datadate plus the remaining duration (unless one uses the function to reschedule remaining work after a date function, creating another type of datadate) which is the commonly accepted way of calculating the end date of an inprogress task. It is also not possible to unlink percentage complete and remaining duration in MSP. All of these issues make it very difficult to nearly impossible to use MSP for cashflowing in a progressed schedule without using some of the heigher end functions and spending 4 times more time than with P3 and getting very frustrated.

In my opinion top down cashflowing should be done in purpose built software or spreadsheets which do not rely on calendars and do not calculate in periods less than the periods that the cash flow is required in. P3 and MSP are not suitable. Primavera Enterprise has a Budgeting Module but that is without its problems. The ones that I have found are that it only has a 4 years budgeting span, costs may only be entered in months. I have a client with a 40 year project and want to enter cost by year and quater. Hopefully these function will bve developed in due coourse.

Regards

Paul E Harris
Director
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd
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Wed, 2004-12-15 10:25
#5
Andrew Podolny
User offline. Last seen 1 year 16 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 16 Nov 2004
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Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
P3 doesn’t seem to be predictable when scheduling independent activity with resources + individual calendars for each. Although the logic is pretty simple, P3 makes it entangled. So maybe better to use Excel as Paul suggested earlier in this topic.
Paul, did you try MS Project + VBA instead of Excel? Maybe it’s better solution.

Best regards,
Andrew
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Wed, 2004-12-15 01:26
#6
Drew Palmer
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Guys,

Thanks alot for the responses, I’m currently trying to iron out some bugs in applying Andrews suggestion, but failing that I will go to the activity-per-resource approach proposed by Jaco.

Paul, I agree with the point you make about top down budgeting in P3, and that in this particular case excel may be a more appropriate tool to use.

The intent behind my original post was to try and close a gap in my P3 knowledge regarding the use of resource calendars. You have all provided valuable suggestions on how to solve my specific problem.

Cheers,
Drew
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Tue, 2004-12-14 07:06
#7
Paul Harris
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Drew

P3 is a great tool for bottom up cashflowing where you have costs against multiple project activities.

There are number of problems however with attempting top down budgeting with p3.

1. If you are using a daily calendar then the funds are not apportioned equally over each month as the months are different lengths, ie between 28 and 31 days long when you are using a 7 day per week calendar. If you have a five day per week calendar with holidays the problem gets even worse for the months where Christmas and New Year occurs which have even lees days per month. This results in an answer that people often find hard to accept although mathmatically correct with each month having different values.
2. When the tasks are moved and/or rescheduled the cash flow per month changes and there are therefore different values per month calculated and often the duration of the task has to be changed to ensure the task ends on the last day of the month, resulting in different values again. I usually do this with constraints.

After going through this excerise a couple of times I now use excel with some relationships created with formulae and a couple of macros. I find it a lot quicker and the values per month are equal and people and happier with the result.

I can see why Primavera wrote the top down budgeting module in P3e.

Regards

Paul E Harris
Director
Eastwood Harris
Planning and Scheduling Book Publishers and Training
www.eh.com.au
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Tue, 2004-12-14 04:22
#8
Andrew Podolny
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Hi, Drew!

You’ve forgot one crucial thing. Independent task needs at least one driving resource in order to spread rest of resources (each with it’s own calendar) correctly.
So, just add to activity one dummy resource with base calendar and mark it driving. Then add another 2 resources those represent money (in your case) each one with it’s own calendar. That’s all!
If you’ll have any question - just drop me a message.

Best regards,

Andrew
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Tue, 2004-12-14 00:04
#9
Jaco Stadler
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What about an Activity per resource.

I normally use an activity per package. and are getting good results for cash flow. Using import export function.

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Mon, 2004-12-13 23:21
#10
Drew Palmer
User offline. Last seen 11 years 10 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 9 Feb 2001
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Daya,

Thanks for the suggestion.

I had tried achieving the desired effect using resource lag & duration, and whilst it is possible, ultimately the program will run to ’000’s of activities and these fields would need to be calculated for each - which would prove to be a considerable effort.

That’s why I was hoping to use the characteristics of the resource (ie resource calendar) to create a solution that remains applicable regardless of the characteristics of each individual activity.

Everything that I’ve read on the subject indicates that resource calendars can be used to define ’work’ and ’non-work’ time - I’m just having trouble achieving this in practice.

Thanks again, your help is appreciated.

Drew
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Mon, 2004-12-13 03:37
#11
Dayanidhi Dhandapany
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Hi,

you can use the resource lag/duration field to separate occurrence of second resource on the required financial period(2nd) as well restricting the first resource spread as per your required financial period(1st). I hope this will work out for you.
If you need a sample program, leave me your email id here or you can email to plannerdaya@yahoo.com

Cheers!!!

Daya
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