P6R7: Sub_Contractor Ressources loading

I talked about resource which includes renewable as well as non-renewable resources and the fact that neither are equivalent to Volume of Work. Warned about some untrained schedulers believing volume of work and non-renewable resources [material resources or consumables] are equivalent, a big mistake.

Still there are special cases of resources that are not purely renewable or non-renewable resources, worth to mention.

From, http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/dynamic_scheduling/baseline/resource-types-renewable-and-consumable-resources

Renewable and consumable resources are the two commonly used resource classes in software tools, although many other extensions have been proposed in the academic literature. These special cases can often not be incorporated in software tools, although they can sometimes be modeled as a combination of renewable and consumable resources. A non-exhaustive list is given along the following lines.

 Spatial resources are required by a group of activities, rather than a single activity as renewable resources. The spatial resource is occupied from the first moment an activity from the group starts until the finish of all activities from that group. Examples are dry docks in a ship yard or a freezing machine in the Westerscheldetunnel (see “Case study: Work continuity constraints in the Westerscheldetunnel”).

Doubly constrained resources are constrained on a periodic basis, similar to renewable resources, as well as for the total project duration, as with the consumable resources. An example is a total budget with an extra restriction of a maximum limit per period.

 Partially renewable resources assume for each resource a capacity restriction on a subset of periods. A resource type is characterized by a number of subsets of periods and a certain total availability. A typical example is a worker who is allowed to work during all days of the week and only one day (i.e. Saturday or Sunday) during the weekend.

In summary, resources are not limited to a crew(s) or team(s) composition and shall never be confused with volume of work.

The Subcontractor is part of your team, usually he is contractually obligated to cooperate with the scheduling of the job then just ask him. If his resource plans are not enough to satisfy yours then you shall start negotiating on a plan that will make it. Make him a part of the team, if you all work on different directions and plans are not clear problems will eventually surface. If he cooperate with the schedule he will be more willing to follow it than if you force him to follow a one sided schedule.

I would avoid playing the scheduler that knows everything, that error would make me a keyboard jockey. I suggest to never assume how others will do their job, that includes the subcontractors as well as your own PM. As a matter of fact prior to signing a subcontract we talk about scheduling as time is of the essence in our contracts.

Cost can be a relative thing. What is cost to the Owner [payables to Contractor] is income to the Contractor [billings], costs to the Contractor [payables to his suppliers and own labor] are usually confidential, same goes to Subcontractors.

I understand some might be tempted for a shortcut [the longest path between two points] and make some assumptions, good maybe for a preliminary schedule but not good enough for a true schedule to be used for actual management. I would not show my preliminary assumptions to my Subcontractors, I do not show my cards, I would ask them to show theirs as on this game I have that right.

It is common for some of our Subcontractors to be local to the region where the job is located, these have limited resources and this must be taken into account in our schedules. We cannot schedule more activities he can handle on any given time due to resource limitations. Usually some of these Subcontractors activities are on the critical path, we got to plan it right.

Maybe you are confusing resources with volume of work.

Volume of work needs resources to be done but they are not the same.

100 sm [volume of work] of paint needs painters [the resources].

In the Construction Industry productivity for decades [or centuries] has been a production rate, volume of work per unit time. You need both, volume of work and resource hours, used on any given period of time to measure how productivity varies with time, to have a view about productivity trends.

I do not believe P6 can give you the information in a direct and transparent way as it does not have functionality for activity volume of work.

P6 was originally developed for IT jobs by another company, neither was Primavera or ORACLE, no matter how different versions are called it is still oriented for IT jobs where work is measured in different way, using hours and not volume of work as it has been for centuries in the Construction world.

I recall using a version called P3ec, the "c" was for "Construction", ironically it was the same female monkey, just with a different dress. Here we say "no matter how you dress the female monkey she will still be a female monkey". We are Spanish speaking so we have a different name for a female monkey "mona' than for a male monkey 'mono' the end letters "a" and "o" define the gender.

The workaround using user defined field can work with very limited functionality. Guess a bit is better than nothing.