Hi there. I am hoping someone can solve a conundrum I am facing.
I have a project that has 3 Separable Portions, somewhat interrelated, but each with their own contractual end date. The program has approx. 1000 activities, all leading towards the Project Completion Milestone.
When the Critical Path is calculated the Float is calculated based on the completion of the final (latest finishing) Separable portion. Therefore, Total Float on the program is displayed for all activities, (even those outside of this Portion of works) relative to the end date of the final separable portion – being the PC date for the project.
The project manager wants to know which activities within each Separable Portion are the most critical to that specific Separable Portion’s completion. IE which activities he needs to focus on in order to meet his Separable Portion completion dates (to avoid LD’s). Given the delay to completion of one SP has no bearing (mostly) on the completion of the other, total float is, at least contractually, quite meaningless.
Ideally we could choose to identify the critical patch between two activities - activity X say ‘Site Access’ and activity Y say ‘Sep Portion 2 Completion’. Filter by SP2 and we have a printable program with the CP displayed for that potion and float shown relative to this SP2 completion date. In other words, show the critical path between these two activities only.
For each SP, we can simply identify an end date applicable to the CP calculation and bingo… job done.
I have been doing some research around Multiple Float paths and trawling around P6 sites without much success. Without creating multiple programs, is anyone aware of a possible solution?
Thanks very much.
Dave.