Resouce Based Durations

Hi Vishnu,

The no of working days is 125. If you incorporate the holidays, grader maintenance days and 'weather effect' in calendar, I think you can achieve 180 days.

Earthwork is the critical, i mean more time consuming activity in roads than its predeccesors (Clearing & Grubbing), therefore once Earthworks start it should continuosly progress till completion, without any other time gaps between sections of the project, except if there are land acquisition problems or land handing over constraints in the contract.

Generating gaps inbetween would seem meaningless.

Hope this helps to a certain extent,

Regards,

K.

maqeel

You can download from Spider site their demo, is free and for unlimited time, but only works for 40 activities. They also have a free reader that can read any size schedule but cannot edit it. Both you can distribute to anyone for free. If you have a high speed Internet downloading shall take 2 minutes, for full version 2 minutes also, for installation less than 2 minutes, updates takes one click of the mouse new single user installation perhaps 2 clicks of the mouse. This is serious stuff, takes some time to master as if learning to fly a fighter jet.

http://www.spiderproject.ru/enter.php?ver=prof&lang=eng

Although you can distribute for free the reader, I believe only registered users can download from the site the latest version, then thereafter anyone can distribute that copy.

For P6 I am still looking for a full working demo and a viewer, if you know about them please let me know.

For a comparison table of features you can download a comparison table from the following link.

http://www.spiderproject.ru/library/eng/compare_e.xls

But it only tells you half the story, it is not just about numbering functionalities but also about how good each is.

Each vendor and most users will tell you their particular software is the best, is what they know, this time I will limit my comments to ask you first try for yourself both and compare and second I will say that schedulers that are resource loading their schedules activity by activity with multiple resources on each activity, with multiple crews working on the same activity they are nuts, and this is just a scratch on the surface. In Spider Project you can copy your crews by using multi resources, you can copy an activity with all resources but by changing volume of work duration will be adjusted according to resource productivity you copied or you adjusted after the copy and paste, dig it yourself and you will be amazed.

I have no economical interest with Spider Project team, I am just another scheduler interested on the advancement of our tools for our own benefit.

Count on me to help you start working with Spider, it will also be a learning experience for me.

Regards,

Rafael

Dear Mr. Rafael,

Can you tell me what is the  Difference between if Spider project and P6? and may i know that spider have trail version or know? becoze i like to check how it is working?

thanks for your quick answer pls

maqeel

Vishnu,

The duration of your activity is driven by other activities, it is not a resource-based duration, it is a Hammock activity, then as it expands it means the resource assignment percent will be reduced, just let the software know by how much.

In Spider Project this can be done by using "Calculate Work Loads". This calculation is used for activities of Duration and Hammock types. It calculates resource assignments work load so that, with productivities given, activity volume will be completely performed during given activity duration. If this is not achievable (resulting work load exceeds 100 %), the corresponding error message will appear. If workload can be calculated, its amount will be entered in the corresponding activity assignment field.

In Spider Project, you can also solve the issue with a simple formula that will adjust workload as the duration of your hammock activity changes. The following illustration shows how resource assignment is changed by the formula and how you get the same total of resource hours per hammock activity. This will allow for idle resources be used by other activities if resource leveling calls them.

If using other software please do not come with the crazy idea of using fractions of your resources as a substitute to partial assigments, would result in wrong modeling. Perhaps the formula method can be of help if using other software.

Best regards,

Rafael

dear all ,

in special cases , like roads you have to prepare a programme  by stations ,

and you have to respect two things :

1. the mass haul diagram

2. available working hours .

Hi Vishnu

For a start your driving resource on any mass excavation is the haulage disposal - not the excavation.

If your activity is split by intervening tasks that create gaps in production then there is no point in trying to resource model the whole thing.

Split your task into the relative sections and model each section using the applicable volume and output - thus giving a duration for each section.

Now put the sections under a summary bar and add a shadow resource to the summary - non modelled of course - and you will get an indication of the expected down time.

Check this against the estimate to see how much money will be lost - or may be recovered.

Best regards

Mike Testro