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Dear all,
I've been given the task to level a construction programme for P5.
This programme has a number of 1 day activites which makes leveling a nightmare as theres 100's of these activities. I thought of individual placing the activities and checking the histogramme to ensure there is a level number of men on the project, but this would take too long and there must be a easier way. I've tried to 'auto level' it but it doesnt seem to be doing much difference?!
Having a necessary milestone(end of blockade) which is required to be hit every couple of months might be one of the problems which is stopping 'auto levelling' to work. There is a limit to the number of men working in the area and therfore this might mean working weekends or 24 hour shift towards the end of a blockade but prelimanary we dont want to work out of normal working hours unless necesssary.
Can anyone help?
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Chris,
Although I am not a P5 user, long ago used P3 and then SureTrak, software that would allow for the leveling be stopped if it delays project completion, a setting that leaves unresolved the issue on over-allocation. Perhaps you have a similar setting and therefore the resource leveling is being stopped. If this is the case and you want to create a schedule that is real you must set the software to allow delaying the duration and then find the real solution either by increasing the amount of workers allowed (seems like a no-no) or use shift work.
I believe P5 is incapable of modeling true shift work on a single activity and the work around is splitting the activity into separate activities, one for each shift. Then this is the start of your problems as you do not know how much work is to be done by each shift, and gets more complicated as there is progress and work on some shifts are delayed.
You can try yourself a simple scenario to test your software.
Activity 1
500cm rock excavation
Resource 1 production 10cm/hr and works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 10hrs/day
Resource 2 production 15cm/hour and works on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 10 hrs/day
If activity starts on Monday:
Monday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Tuesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm
Thursday =>> Resource 2 will produce 50 cm in about 3 hours
Activity will take 3 days 3 hours.
If activity starts on Wednesday :
Wednesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm
Thursday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm
Friday =>> Resource 2 will produce 100 cm in about 7 hours
Activity will take 2 days 7 hours.
If your software is not capable of modeling the above, simple shift work on a single activity, then every time the activity is delayed, the distribution of work is shifted, when you have many such activities and work different hour shifts on different days it can become quite complicated.
For some software the modeling of true shift work is a walk on the park but I am assuming that like most of us you have no other option than to stick with what you have.
The second thing I would investigate is on the use of bucket planning that allows for resource assignment to happen at times different to activity duration, I do not know how this work but it might be fooling the resource leveling.
Regards,
Rafael
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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