We are now testing the Impress Interface solution (global Shell EP design) between SAP (v 4.2.c) and Primavera (6.2) test databases after vendor installation and training took place late 2009.

The solution is primarily meant to display, integrate and publish in Primavera SAP based activities data whereby certain functions will use the scheduling synchroniser and others not. Once activities are scheduled in Primavera and back passed into SAP (changing dates) SAP will DSEX (block) scheduling functionality ensuring this way there is only one schedule master. We want to use the solution for both SAP PM (maintenance and well services) as well as SAP PS (Projects and drilling of new oil and gas wells).

We hope to go live for a test area under windows-7 in May. Transferring WBS, codes, activities and relationships is successful with good performance at the initial creation stage (3106 drilling activities with associated SAP codes/info were created in Primavera within 25 minutes).

However, we experience still some date synchronisation problems. For instance once activities have started (partially confirmed in SAP), we see finished dates in Primavera at confirmation time. Playing with the calendars we also see some strange behaviour. We are further investigating this together with the global project team. It seems that the 3 type of Primavera date fields (status: tk_notstart; tk_active; tk_complete) are not always matching with the SAP data fields as per Impress logic.

If you have similar experiences or solutions that you like to share, I would be keen to hear from you.