Leveling Schmeveling

Hi Mike -



Exactly. Whenever the Contractor has people ready to perform the work and at the last minute the track outage or access is cancelled or... they don’t get their contractually-guaranteed time on the tracks, we wind up paying for "lost" or "idle" time. This is usually reconciled monthly using nothing more than a spreadsheet with the formula being: Lost Time x # of Workers x Hourly rate. Over the course of a year, it can add up to a sizeable amount.



The Contractor’s entitlement to lost time is a relatively new Contract provision and makes this type of project more attractive to potential bidders. Of course, the Contract always states that track outages are at the discretion of the owner and the railroad operation comes first, blah, blah blah. Last year I worked on a project where the NY Yankees getting into the World Series caused the Contractor’s on-track time to be diminished and he was compensated accordingly.



Best regards,



Lawrence

Hi Valdimir,



Of course I offered a different point of view. There are many discussions on PP regarding resources and the importance of managing them correctly. My "different point of view" is that (with regard to their loading into he CPM) they are not important to EVERYONE. I agree that for some people/projects they are very important.



As far as "10 workers on one square foot", I leave that to the Contractor’s foreman, who knows better than I do how to manage his labor. Obviously, if a Contractor is working in a small signal relay room, he is not going to be able to use 10 men to speed up the wiring of the room. Once again, all that I am saying is that FOR SOME OF US, managing resources through the CPM is not always a must.



Pretty good regards,



Lawrence

Hi Mike -



You are spot on with your assessment. I agree with what you say about the Critical Path as it is totally driven by access and outages. Eventually, the schedule deteriorates into a bar chart. The Critical Path can be estimated as going throught the area with the most difficult work, but really, it has no meaning. You basically have to do the work whenever you can get access and throw all the workers (cats)into the area to get it done before the tracks/area goes back into service. The subways system in New York does not like to delay service for any reason, even if it is in the interest of capital improvements that ultimately result in better service.



My reason for starting this thread was simply to offer a different point of view about resources.



Best regards,



Lawrence

The reason I brought this up was to indicate that not everyone is affected by the way P6/P3 handles resources. Of course, if you are limited, then it is important. Most of the projects I work on (from the owner’s side) rely heavily on the Contractor’s foreman/superintendent to adequately man the project. These guys are great (the major contractors anyway) at estimating what they need and carrying out the plan. For the most part, they are not interested in the schedule and rarely look at one. Yet somehow, the job gets done. I’m just saying that for SOME of us, the way Primavera handles resources is not an issue. I am more constrained by access to work areas and having to rely on support from in-house railroad personnel to open rooms, protect the Contractor’s workers and give me track outages when I need them.