(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?
(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.
hi there everyone i am so honored to share information with you guys...
i have project with the following given information::
my approach at least "theoretically" with this project was as following:
so i rolled up my sleeves ..and opened up Primavera p6 and did the following:
for example:
for my steel fixer team i assigned thier units/time=225h/d
as if 225kg/d
Now my questions:
your prompt response will be very highly appreciated
best regards
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Your example is too simple and static; shift work and partial assignments are very common and when you add different production rates to the same resource for different activities or if using skills the tweaking can become very complicated, not transparent and error prone. In most real life scenarios resource assignments and their productivities are dynamic therefore the models shall be dynamic.
Try the following exercise to see if your approach can tackle real life scenarios such as when activity duration depends on how work is distributed among different shifts on same activity, each shift with different production rate. It is not a complex scenario it is one activity scenario, could not be easier with the exception of your example.
Another scenario can be when using automatic skill replacement such as the following. Please note the same resource is having different production rates for different activities and must be leveled.
You will be able to see how simple and transparent it is if using software more capable by following next link.
Construction CPM Conference 2017 link to presentation.
BTW as far as I recall from when I had access to P6 when showing Activity Resources Tab you can display units/time and override default. This can help when same resource productivity is different for different activities but will not help for skills automatic assignment within P6 or with any other more advanced models.
It is just like an old mechanical calculator of the early 20's not as easy to use as a 70's calculator or Excel, it adds no modeling functionality.
Hi,
I wrote an article regarding How to define Resource Productivity in Primavera P6 and create schedule.
If you're interested, kindly read it here https://doduykhuong.com/2017/03/27/how-to-define-resource-productivity-in-primavera-p6-and-create-schedule/
please am having a problem relating to this post. my client asked me to provide resources productivity rate and cost coefficient through BOQ on activities. please kindly help me with way out.
please am having a problem relating to this post. my client asked me to provide resources productivity rate and cost coefficient through BOQ on activities. please kindly help me with way out.
Quote - As you suggest, the best method is to have one norm for one particular item of work and then apply a factor for the circumstances such as inside the shop or on a site of the petrochemical industry, or outside work, at ground level or at scaffolding, in close or defined spaces, particular hot condition. Keep the norm static and tune with the factor.
Not necessarily the best but the most needed, I use it over 90% of the times, in some jobs 100%.
At times a variable resources crew with production determined by amount of resources is the way to go, this does not happens as often but it does happens. Some Crew resources might be fixed while others might be variable. Use minimum to keep the combination within practical and efficient limits. See figure, there are six (15cm) trucks available. As you can see Activity 2 uses the minimum required of 2 trucks but will use the maximum 6 when available, this is how in practice resources are used. It would make no sense not to use all available resources when you can, would be bad planning, a waste of money, time and resources.
At times a few static crew compositions are in order, here the software can select based on priorities the best fixed team and determine the activity duration based on the selected team production rate. We shall discuss these and other resource modeling needs latter on at a Spider thread.
Because of your industry I believe you will be very interested on the modeling of shifts on a single activity. It will be a learning experience to compare the methodologies and the results.
Both of you will be welcome to debate the issues and criticize the methodologies to make sure they are good.
Best regards,
Rafael
Quote - As you suggest, the best method is to have one norm for one particular item of work and then apply a factor for the circumstances such as inside the shop or on a site of the petrochemical industry, or outside work, at ground level or at scaffolding, in close or defined spaces, particular hot condition. Keep the norm static and tune with the factor.
Not necessarily the best but the most needed, I use it over 90% of the times, in some jobs 100%. At times a variable resources crew with production determined by amount of resources is the way to go, this does not happens as often but it does happens. At times a few static crew compositions are in order, here the software can select based on priorities the best fixed team and determine the activity duration based on the selected team production rate. At times the crew composition, labor, equipment and production varies depending on the season and the activity might move among seasons as the job progress. We shall discuss these and other more advanced resource modeling needs latter on at a Spider thread.
Both of you will be welcome to debate the issues and criticize the methodologies to make sure they are good.
Hi Rafael
Interesting the views on production rates and productivity factors. I agree with you that the use of crew sizes is not good practice and i do not use this technique.
As you suggest, the best method is to have one norm for one particular item of work and then apply a factor for the circumstances such as inside the shop or on a site of the petrochemical industriy, or outside work, at ground level or at scaffolding, in close or defined spaces, particular hot condition. Keep the norm static and tune with the factor.
This gives the opportunity to learn form the work carried out and the multiplying factors whom are to apply for further works.
For the junior planners i make one example.
Make 3 meters of fillet weld 6 mm at ground level and make the same weld at scaffolding at 20 meters high.
3 meter @ 2.15 hrs/ml x factor 1 = 6.45 hours
3 meter @ 2.15 hrs/ml x factor 1.3 for working on scaffolding 20 meters high = 8.39 hours.
Johannes
Dear mr refael,
YOU ARE SCRATCHING ME RIGHT WHERE I ITCH.....that's exactly what it is...production factor is not much of an issue to me what iam trying to tackle here is to model my "PRODUCTIVITY OUTPUT" which i got from my company DATABASE so iam assuming it's factor is always "1"....
Dear Johannes,
if iwanted to use "fixed duartion" i never wouldve gone through this productivity rate/output thing...my life would've been much easier and direct.
anyway thank you both very very much for this tremendously helpful information....i am gonna "what if scenarios" the hell out of that model and experiencing the result and post the output to you....thank you thank you ....abunch...
you guys are amazing...
Johannes.
That is the idea. Take your time to explore Spider and will continue in a couple of weeks, preferably in Spider thread as not to interfere with the main issue on this one.
Please continue the discussion, my suggestion about keeping it simple under this circumstances is all I can suggest here.
You said; "You are mixing up two different things, productivity factor and production output ...". I agree 100% with you, related but not the same as defined in P6 and MSP, and here we are speaking P6. Others define productivity as equal to production rate. I recognize both definitions, the issue is on semantics and how the software implements them.
My point is that production output is the mayor concern in scheduling, so much that Abdullah is trying to model resource loading using the correct metric but cannot find in his software how to apply it in a direct way. Here I believe you can be of much help.
More often than not you can define your crew size and based on this you can figure out the production rate for this crew. Then knowing the Volume of Work required you can estimate the Activity Duration. Because in many cases there is not a linear relationship between crew size and production rate this method is widely used. It is for more complicated scheduling models, where crew size can vary depending on the availability and the production rate is proportional to the amount of resources used that you need advanced functionality that is transparent and easy to use.
When using a reference standard for production rate and defining productivity different to production rate/output you apply productivity factors to production rate/output depending on factors such as climate, location, crew experience etc. When not using a reference but your own production rate from your company records and experience then you do not need to make the adjustments under similar conditions, in this case your productivity factor will be 1 and the "adjusted" production rate will stay the same.
Best regards,
Rafael
Hi Rafael
Thank you for your information about the spider software. Maybe we learn from each other.
Regards Johannes
Hi Abdullaziz
Your approach on your first item is incorrect. If you are seriously trying to make resources assignments, resources leveling, measure progress and resource productivity calculation a success you cannot use BOQ items as you suggest. Labor hours are labor and no materials or the other 20 plus items whom are making the complete unit rate.
Your explanation of the second item maybe as follows. I understand that you have one steel fixers crew consisting i steel fixer and two helpers who are capable of fixing 225 kg/day. This i can understand.
You are mixing up two different things, productivity factor and production output or norm for steel fixing per kgs. In you case, the steel fixers crew should have an productivity factor of 1 if they are making every day the output of 225kg/day. Is they are generating an output of less then the 225kg/day then the productivity factor (CPI)is less then 1 and by more output more then 1.
You understanding on Max units/time is incorrect.
Forget about this for a while and study the above.
Regards Johannes
Johannes,
Agree P3 and SureTrak are very limited software by todays standards. At their time Enterprise scheduling software were few and very expensive, today this has changed.
All stand alone functionality and more is available on the enterprise version of Spider Project. As a matter of fact I understand there is a limitation on the activities ID number of characters within P6 and wonder on a portfolio with thousands of very large jobs how you overcome this limitation of P6.
I also find the 4GIG database limitation of P6 ridiculous by todays standards as todays laptop computers can store terabites of data, especially now that P6 is owned by ORACLE.
You should investigate the advanced functionalities in addition to the basic ones. Here among many you will find how the transfer of data among jobs is much easier than with P6 SDK Excel spreadsheets that it will look primitive when in reality it might be just the opposite, Spider has a very basic interface to transfer data among the tables, maybe also basic in terms of programming by the software developer. Another related limitation in addition to ease of use can be the limitations by Excel itself. Let say you have 700,000 activities portfolio and you want to transfer activity data from one version to another, guess Excel will run short.
Take your time to familiarize with the basics and then we can move to the advanced functions and just for fun challenge each other software.
Best regards,
Rafael
Dear refeal;
thank you very much sir for your input ...i'll give it a shot..that's for sure
Dear johannes;
fisrtly: regarding extract labor content from the unit rates...my approach was as following:
this way "at least to understading"cost will be budgeted only from BOQ without me having done "rate analysis" agian
secondly: regarding 225h/d as if 225kg/d:
total of 3 labors not 23 labors
eager to you response
Hi Rafael
I had a similar experience . I have used Suretrak and P3 . This was good for project planning but not for portfolio management and scheduling and resources leveling over multiple projects over multiple sites, and using the same labor resources. P6 works very well . The file management is perfectly covered at the EPS. We also have a super user whom keeps track and guards all the files and schedules and access rights. I am satisfied with P6 but i shall download a demo from spider to evaluate.
Johannes
Suggest you download Spider Demo and then at Spider forum we can test drive it with the basic requirements you just mentioned and then move to more complex resource modeling needs and compare against P6 or any other software on the market.
http://www.spiderproject.ru/enter.php?ver=prof&lang=eng
I was a Primavera user for years, from the days of original P3 and SureTrak, not to be confused with P3e nor P5, nor P6, a different software bought from another developer. As soon as I tried P3e I figured out Primavera was no longer to be my choice, same as MSP, the most widely used scheduling software in the world that fits the needs of many but not mine. We ended up using P3e as a way to keep organized al jobs files submitted in old P3 format, the database maintenance was so difficult we had to hire a Miami based consultant just for these purposes.
Best regards,
Rafael
Hi Abdullaziz
What you are attempting to accomplish is perfectly possible in P6.
I understand that you would like to assign resources to your schedule and you have the BOQ and you have also the production rates for your resources.
First of all you need to extract the labor content from the unit rates of the BOQ. Request the estimator of the project to do this for you.
If you have the labor units for each part of the BOQ, group and sort them to suit the activities in your schedule.
The next step is to make a make a resource register for labor recourses under "Enterprise".
In your case you have steel fixer team of 225 hrs a day. Say that this is 23 steel fixers. Set this as the limit in the resources register.
Say you have an activity with an estimate of 500 hrs for the steel fixers. Use fixed duration and use duration type for percentage completion and assign these 500 hrs to the activity. The duration is set as the optimum of the number of steel fixesr whom can work at the same time on the same activity. If you do this for all the activities you soon see whether the resource limit is reached and if these are over allocated.
I agree with Rafael that the productivity rate is expressed as the ratio such as 0.5hrs/m2 or 100hrs/ton.
Trusting this helps
Johannes
Dear Mr Rafeal;
your kind answer sir was very inclusive and sufficient...and i am gonna try to do it as per your recommendations.
however...is there any other powerful software than primavera p6 you are recommending me to use?
I've always thought that primavera p6 is "state of the art" technology to model realistic schedules...
your help will be very highly appreciated
Abdullah,
What you are trying to do is the logical and natural way 100%. This is how for centuries estimators and schedulers have figured out their estimates, from the Great Pyramid using papyrus and the abacus to a few decades ago when all knowledge was lost with the arrival of defective functionality scheduling software, I believe it started with MSP. The functionality in order to be practical got to be clear and transparent.
My suggestion about considering other software options is real, if you continue using cumbersome functionality to what comes naturally eventually it will get you into trouble.
In case you have no other software option better model fixed activity duration and fixed resource production manually, my honest recommendation. It will not necessarily yield as good schedules but at least will be safer. I am sure with some logic deduction you can manually get very good results, your honest and respectful reply to my comments tell me so.
About material resources it might be different in your software, in mine material resources mean consumable resources. BTW I always believed it wrong to name consumable resources as material resources because there might be the case where material resources are re-usable and do not consume at all, let say formwork, is it a labor resource, is it an equipment resource or a material resource that is limited but not consumed? And what about when you are assigned some labor resource for your use a limited time, is it a material resource or a consumable resource? We think and communicate using language, it shall be used correctly otherwise the thinking will be defective.
Best regards,
Rafael
Dear Mr Rafael;
thank you very very much for your prompt reply...
however...i'm trying to make primavera p6 doining what i want to do...unfortunately there is no direct approach in primavera p6 to make me do what i wanna do..and i have to tweak it a bit to make it go with my approach...what i describe above in my post is what i came up with... please sir if you have any other approach please reel me in...cause i am doing my best with primavera p6 to make it do just that...
you help will be highly appreciated
To me productivity as the result of time/time is silly, it even looks stupid. Making BOQ a material resource is silly as well, BOQ represents the agreed breakdown value for payment purposes.
Productivity shall be defined as a production rate, a ratio of volume of work per unit of time. Seems like productivity is defined by some software as it is defined for time studies without any consideration on the application.
Good luck my friend, productivity units defined as h/d makes no sense, if your software forces you to make all sort of tricks you can only follow then it is not good for your needs. One of the very basic management needs is good communication and all this does not helps, you shall look for better ways.
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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