Resource Dependent Activity Type In Primavera P6

You can try yourself a simple scenario for variable production rates among shifts, a common scenario in real jobs.

• 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.

• Every time the activity is delayed, the distribution of work is shifted, when you have many such activities and work on different hour shifts, different days it can become quite complicated. For a single shot you can use incapable software with manual distribution of work among shifts for anything else distributing work by hand is nuts.

In order to correctly model shift work you must be able to model separate teams on a single activity.  P6 cannot efficiently model shift work, usually the P6 scheduler recurs to subdivide the activity into two and must manually adjust duration of each one, a monumental task as work is moved among linked activities.

Just take a look at the following schedule, an extremely simple case of shift work scheduling.  Activity 1 requires an effort of 16 resource hours. Resource A is available on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday 8 hours a day. Resource B is available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays 4 hours a day on a shift that starts just after resource A shift. It is a requirement contractor can work only 12 hours a day.

If activity starts on Mondays' first shift it will span 2 calendar work days, if delayed to start on Wednesday's second shift it will span 4 calendar workdays. 

When shifts resource quantity [a common case] and production rates are different [not uncommon] it gets more complicated, not to mention if you add a few independent teams to each shift or the extreme when all resources can work independently of each other.  P6 cannot dream of modeling different resource production rates other than by manual adjustments. P6 cannot handle multiple independent teams on a single activity. As if not enough add to this resource leveling and the issue becomes too complicated for manual adjustments. 

"In order for Primavera P6 to correctly display the Insulate Piping activity on the Gantt chart you would have to assign the insulation material the same personal calendar as the Pipe Insulator, thus ensuring that both resources occur/function in parallel."

Working calendars shall take into account all existing constraints. If some of the crew resources have vacations then the crew will not work, if an activity cannot be done at certain time then this time shall be idle for all assigned resources.

What if the same material is used on activities that are performed by different resource crews with different calendars? What if there are several resources that have different calendars and are used on many activities in different crews? Adjusting calendars for one crew we may damage the calendars for other crews.