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Delay due to preparatory activities.

5 replies [Last post]
Sat, 2006-08-26 06:14
vinod raturi
User offline. Last seen 7 years 30 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 57
Groups: GPC Qatar, Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Hi all ,

My query is how do you deal with preparatory activity in MS project .
For eg ,In our co. most of the people knows that to set up 1/2 inch nozzle will take 1/2 hour ,( an activity which is reflected in barcharts ) but still it is found that it is never on time , main culprit being time required for gathering resources , for fitting. OR you can say we dont have data on time required for preparatory activity.

What do you guys do in such cases. ?

How do you reflect such delays in MS Project ?

Do you guys take some percentage of time for prep activity ?

I need all inputs from gurus out there .

regards,

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Replies

Sat, 2006-09-02 08:24
#1
vinod raturi
User offline. Last seen 7 years 30 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 57
Groups: GPC Qatar, Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Hi guys ,

Do you generally calculate time for prep activity as some sort of percentage time , utilised for actual actvity.

Today i was surprised tolearn that the activity of 10 hrs duration ,which i am tracking ,required an effort of 3 persons for full 12 hours yesterday so that activity can be started today .

I guess it is time for me to keep eye on preparatory activites , and resources required for the same.
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Fri, 2006-09-01 18:19
#2
Tom Farmer
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Joined: 19 Jan 2005
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Food for thought about prepartory activities . . . if there is a resource change of hands, even within the same company, consider breaking out the acitivity. Additionally, be guided by managable activity durations. Site activities greater than 30 calendar days should be split into increments not exceeding 30 calendar days to enable identification of slippage or production deviation in time to recover.
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Thu, 2006-08-31 04:51
#3
John Lawson
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Joined: 6 Oct 2004
Posts: 113
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Hi,

In cases as descibed - I usually use the activty description as "Procure & Install" and have a duration that reflects the activity.

John
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Tue, 2006-08-29 08:56
#4
James Griffiths
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Joined: 19 May 2006
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Hi Vinod,

This is always something that we encounter when describing activities. When discussing with the engineers, they always fail to think of the "preparatory" activities. As a result the activities always take longer that shown on the project.

Yes, you could insert the prep’. activities as an individual task, but it then becomes a monster to update. Personally, I try to ensure that the duration of the task takes account of the prep’. activities. This is where the individual programmer’s style is employed - in knowing the full content of the activity as opposed to just its name.

James.
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Sun, 2006-08-27 21:41
#5
Zhang Haixiang
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Joined: 14 Apr 2005
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for me this is not a problem.

task name is only a short description of a set of works.

e.g. "nozzle installation" make contains some hidden works, get the nozzle from warehouse, then goto jobsite....

any delay will cause "nozzle installtion" delay, so when update this task, show the delay that’s all.

You do not need to think in such a detail way.
But some preparation works are very important, and should be consider as task. for example pipe fabrication,equipment procurement/delivery...

HTH
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