Planning Units...

Mr. Planner,



Changing duration types is in Primavera is a no no for professional P3 users. The reason is that P3 users are very disciplined and organized.



Before I would even add a single activity, I would determine if my project would have to be planned on a daily, hourly or weekly basis. Usually, I’d do it on an hourly (for plant shutdowns and fabrication works); or daily (for construction works).



Once I have identified which one I would use, then I identify my nonworktime:

- for hours: lunchbreak, off-hours, shifts, etc.

- for days: weekends and holidays.



If you need to present using Weeks, you can adjust the timescale to show it as such. Even months, quarters or years.



If you need to put in a duration of, let’s say 2 weeks, onto an activity (where the project planning duration is set to days), you’d have to decide if your 2 weeks is actually 10, 12 or 14 days. Remember, if you’re planning in days, every day counts. You have to be specific.



I hope this enlightens you.



Although Primavera Enterprise accepts duration estimates in hours, days, weeks, etc., I still qualify how many days I really mean when I say 2 weeks. It is, after all, (for me) not the number of weeks, but the number of workdays.



best regards,



jorge

P3 uses the calendar of the predecessor activity for the relationshp’s lag calendar. MS Project uses the default calendar for lags.

Vladimir



The post may be a bit misleading



What I meant is the relationship between duration and multi calendars and resource on an activity.



Alex

Alex,

number of calendars supported by P3 is too small to be able to assign different calendars to each activity, resource and relationship. And I don’t remember if P3 and MS Project support relationship (lags)calendars.

Let’s accept that calendars is not the strongest point of P3 but this software has other advantages that are more important.

Shepherd Ong



May be you are right that MSP can easily change Planning Units (but not necessary it is accurate). And overall MSP cannot compare with P3 since P3 is far more powerful than MSP

Lots of other software can change planning unit easily but it doesn’t mean they are better planning software.



In addition, I do believe that planing unit have to related to the calenda where each individual activity may have a different calenda and I think MSP is not fully support that multi calenda / resource / relationship.



Alex

In conclusion, P3 is not a good software to do the convertion. The best is Ms Project, just type the duration "day" into "week"!

John, this only change the time scale on chart but not change the display values of duration, lag etc.

My first time on this forum!



Why change durations or lags or calendars or copy the project.

Why not just change the minimum time unit on the Gantt chart?



Or have I misunderstood the problem ?

Alex,



In P3e there might not be a problem (I don’t know, haven’t looked at it) but we’re discussing P3 in this forum.



"2. If you are using P3 - I still suggest using a custom data items to keep the duration as week rather than having a second schedule. Simply because the effort of having two schedule is far too high."



This will work, if you use a Global Change to switch the duration from a fictive hour to day, or day to week duration, but the planning unit will still not change, so don’t schedule the project. If you DO want to schedule the project, you will have to copy the project to a different one and change the planning unit. Then you also have to change the relationship lags.



Just like OD and RD the relationship lags are in planning units. Switching from one planning unit to another requires a change of all planning durations.



Regards,



Marc

Marc Borburgh



Thanks for the reply. What you are doing is transfer/copy the project. Please see my previous e-mail. I am not suggesting copying projects.



1. Using P3e - the user have to do nothing to change the planning units

2. If you are using P3 - I still suggest using a custom data items to keep the duration as week rather than having a second schedule. Simply because the effort of having two schedule is far too high.



As a result I am not suggest to copy the project to another file.



Cheers



Alex

To Alex Wong.



Try this:



Create a project, planning unit days.

2 tasks with a 5 day duration and a FS with a lag of 5 days.

Schedule the project.



Close the project and use Tools ... Project Utilities ... Copy to copy the project to a project with planning unit WEEK.



Open the new project and change the durations from 5 to 1 (assuming a 5 day working calendar).



Schedule the project... your lag is now 5 weeks, not 5 days ! So, you will have to change the lag to 1 week, ie FS 1.

I agree with Alex lag will not change after changing the planning unit. But be carefule with start and finish dates while changing the planning unit from day in to week.If you defined the weeek as Monday to friday then you can not start any activity in between. I mean if you have an activity starting suppose from Thursday will change it to Monday.

I dont agree with changing the relation lag



If the relationship between Act A & B is 2 days, it is still 2 days even you changes the planning unit.

but still you would have to go thru your relationship lags.

In P3e it is simple

by switching the display unit and its finish



Of course in P3 you have to run global changes to change your planning units



One other way is use of customer data items.



When your client is ask you to use say weeks instead of days as your planning unit

you can create a customer data items as integer

and run a global change & convert the days into weeks without changing of keep an different verion of P3

& at the same time you can still view the original schedule

Oliver is right, make sure you use 1 global change per calendar, but what most people forget is that changing the Original Duration only is NOT ENOUGH.



Make sure that all your relationship LAGS are converted too or you might still end-up with a not matching schedule!!

Ali:



Please do not write your PPID and city for advertising purposes. It is forum for discussion and your ID can easily be seen in your profile.



So try to avoid it in future.

Oliver’s answer is correct and more practical than other guys because different calendars usually give inconsistent results.



Therefore Mr. Planner it is appropriate to convert your schedule from days to week or alternative on calendar value basis not Global Change”.

But be careful when using Global Change, as differing calendars will give inconsistent results.



i.e if you have a calender working 7 days and one working 5 days, and you want to change from days to weeks. How long is a week ?. I appreciate that you can selectively change based on calender value, but if care is not taken you will end up with a completely different schedule.

I think, the best way of changing planning unit is by applying a global change......



If you try to copy the project and change the planning unit from days to week, P3 will not automatically change the durations, it will simply read days into weeks. For example if the duration of an activity is 6 days and you copy the schedule and change the unit into week, p3 will consider the new duration of this activity as 6 weeks.





Best Regards,



Tauqeer

[duplicate post]

Yes, if you try to make a copy of this programme, during this P3 will ask you the planning unit and you can then change from day to week/month . . .



Hope this will solve your problem.



Regards

Muhammad Ali

PP ID : 7575

UAE.