Hi Alex,

The tilos report is just another report, and the quality is dependant on the amount of thought you put into what the picture should be.

Regards

Philip

Hi Guys,

If you see a diagram you might understand the concept, True linear activities (eg. continuous activities such as tunnels, trackwork, lateral drainage, finishing layers, viaducts, etc) are shown as sloped lines as the time is vertical and time chainage axis horizontal. Non-linear activities (or activities that is spread over a limited chainage eg. stations, shafts, culverts/utilities crossing the centre line at right angles, etc) is reflected as vertical bars, with the various sub-activies stacked within the bar. For Linear activities such as cuts and fills, where the work is spread over longer chainages (over the whole chainage) we use triangles. The reason for this is that you can use the direction in which the triangle is pointing to indicate where the cut is going, or where the fill is coming from. We use straight horizontal lines to indicate activities such as accesse over certain chainage distances. The beauty of it all is the you can spot clashes or incorrect logic very quickly, and make your corrections in the schedule, something which is much more difficult to spot in in ghantt chart of 200 pages.

Daniel, you are quite correct in that all you are doing is using height instead of chainage, hence, the term line of balance is probably more applicable. However, the symbols you use to depict activities still have to be picked correctly to get the right effect. It may also be interesting to use the horizontal axis for time and height vertically, as this can be done fairly simply. I find that these diagrams are very simply understood by all other disciplines, as the use of colours, patterns and outlines, can depict types of activities, resources etc.

Regards

Philip

Hi Philip,
glad you are back.
What you described is hard to do and produce results that are not quite correct. Hammocks will be represented by straight lines though on activity level the shape would be different. Maybe I don’t understand something.
Regards,
Vladimir

Clive,
Sorry for the late reply..I only open my email once a day.

anyway, 6 months ago when we were looking for a good "line of balance software" Grahpisoft Project Control 2005 was the only one we found in the internet, which corresponds with our needs. (Previously called Dynaproject)

Actually, we just started using it and had undergone training recently.

You were quite right in your brief view of its usage. It is like a time chainage in vertical position, which is good for high rise buildings or repetitive works where there is a lot of interface between various trades.

In addition to what you have said. The sofware requires quantities and production rates defined which will be the basis of your plan. Actual production on site is then monitored. The flowline view (line of balance chart) is an excellent tool for managing the project ilustrated on a single chart. You can then adjust your resources base on your actual production rates to bring it back on line. The beauty of it is that at any point in time you know where every trade is working and how they are doing by just looking at single chart.

The software has many features and includes reports and status of tasks which maybe be discuss in progress meetings of the construction team who are actually doing the work.

This is all for now, I might be mistaken as a Graphisoft representative.

Cheers,
Daniel

Daniel, I know of 3 distinct line of balance applications. I don’t have any experience with any of them, however.

Stacy
PMKB

Daniel
For the CPM freaks it may be worth explaining a little about the Venetian project so they gain an understanding of the power of this type of planning method.
Clive
PS the link I gave provides some pretty good output graphics in PDF and explains a little about the software

try this
strobos.cee.vt.edu/IGLC11/ PDF%20Presentation%20Files%5CP10.PDF
Clive

Line of balance
Say you have a 20 storey building on each floor identical fitting out occurs.
So instead of 20 activities for say raised floor you place the storeys on the left and time along the bottom. You then draw a straight line from storey one to storey 20. Assuming it takes 1 week per floor the line runs for 20 weeks. Then assume ceiling finishes take two weeks per floor same principle. If ceilings start after floors thats ok you can start them say 1 week after floors and they will never catch up if the reverse is true you start at storey 20 with your raised floor line and work backwards ensuring that the two lines do not bisect. Monitoring progess means you colour in the line and ajust the angle for time. Simple graphical programming very suitable for projects with repetitive tasks and easy to understand after a few moments.
Easy to monitor as well.
I am sorry that the explanation looks a bit like the rules of cricket.
Clive

or is it, He who has the gold, breaks or burns the rules? now ACT, ACT, ACT...

Hi to all you you on PP. I’ve just come across this thread, owing to the fact that I’m new to PP. It was so interesting that, instead of doing my work, I just had to go back to the beginning and "read-all-about-it".

Great discussion; excellent viewpoints and experiences. It just goes to show that "planning" is a combination of an art, a science, management philosophy and contract definitions. There is no Golden Rule (as asked in another thread) other than the reply to said thread, being: "He Who Has The Gold Makes The Rules".......brilliant!.

With regard to the number of activities in the schedule: My basic philosophy is: "The level of accuracy and detail to the answers, that you wish to extract from the programme, is proportionate to the amount of time and money you wish to spend on the planning function". KISS(ing) the programme too far means that you’ll save money on the planning/administration....but also you limit the detail and accuracy of the data. Conversely, too much detail and the administrative burden becomes overwhelming. The word OPTIMUM is the order of the day.

Ultimately, I suppose that the real test of the programme’s function is the accuracy of prediction relative to what actually happened. Without being too much of a smart-alec; I detailed my latest project from a basic 800 lines to 4000, running 30,000 manhours over 18 months. In our company, such a project size is not unusual, but the use of a 4000 line programme is unheard of. At 800 lines, on the Tender Programme, it looked achievable (I hasten to add that I wasn’t involved in the Tender Programme). At 4000 it was instantly obvious that it wasn’t achievable. Unfortunately, the budgets/contract had already been agreed. We were in for a really good stuffing!

During subsequent execution of the work, the programme has accurately predicted (relatively speaking) drawing-checking bottlenecks 9 months ahead of schedule. In our business, such a forward projection is pretty-darned good to correctly predict that level of detail so far in advance. Unfortunately, the company’s philosophy toward planning is one that is much more geared toward paying it lip-service than heeding its advice. It’s now paying the price!

I have stood-by my programme since the project. My PM knows that I will stand by the programme and argue with him, because it is derived from detailed discussion with engineers - and he is welcome to investigate any aspect of it. He wants to ignore the data, as would any other PM. However, he also realises that good data is invaluable and that there is no point in kidding himself. The data, however, is utterly useless and a complete waste of money if no action is taken.

All of the above is based on getting the right level detail. If it takes 500 or 50,000 activities, it is irrelevant. The question is: Are you professionally satisfied with what you’ve done?

I really do have to get back to work now.

James :-)

Henk,

just curious why you keep using "bid" instead of bit? would that mean you’re more concerned about costs rather than details?

thanks

Henk,

I don’t understand. Would you mind explaining further?

Best regards,

Edgar

Everyone in the project team needs a clear, honest & reliable information irregardless of which side he/she is working.

The question here is what is the ideal total number of activities for a certain project? Say, a typical high rise building or a road construction? An engineer or a planner who knows how to build inside-out is supposed to understand the basics or the sequencing of the tasks & to organize the program as to produce the desired result.

I agree that there is no definite answer for getting the exact total number of activities (tasks) as each & every project is unique. Now, how can a program becomes measurable? Is it necessary for each & every task to be measurable? And what is supposed to be the ideal unit of measure? Or milestones enough & accurate to measure a project?

Oh, by the way, how is a milestone being measured?

Hi guys,

Hi Walied. Are your working for the contractor or consultant/client side?

For me this question really depends on how you view project management culture in the organization you are working for whether resource allocation is a primary concern in coming up with an execution programme or if the only concern is the project strategy/achievements.

For example, some contractor’s project managers will require his planners to go deeper into resource optimization as what vladimir said. If this is the case, then most likely the activity number will increase. Some contractors doesn’t do this. Some consulting planners require such recource management outputs from the program. Some contracts requires such resource optimization and risk analysis.

To answer again the question, it really depends on the Proj. Management culture.

Just my 2 cents.

Hope this helps.

Se

Sorry, still not agree, i am doing all what you are saying wihout too much subdividing.

My methodology is the programme is a managment tool, not site tool.

However, I respect the difference in points of view.

Vladimir,

I am currently working in project of 110 Villas, with only 1300 Activity, include material & Shop drawings submittals, and Procurment. every villa is 3 floors, include soft and hard landscaping, boundary wall, and of course external works of the site it self. the project is $50 million.

The monitoring and control of the project is smoth and very effiencet, i would like to mention that at any time i can see exactly how many villa is completed and how many was planned by that time and also the number of the villas, (such as villa 44, villa 45, etc..), without the need to make seperate programme for every villa, just making zones.

From project management perspective, making too much activities will make the project team managing the schedule instead of managing the project, this issue is addressed clearly in the PMBOK of PMI, and in any project management book.

Walied Abdeldayem, PMP

I think i agree on that.
One of the worst things that can happen is planning one level to deep. What means that the project will not use your planning anymore because they cant read it. And it means for the planning engineer that he gets the progress on one level higher than his planning so he has a lot of work translating the progress into the planning.

So better try to keep the planning as simple as possible and try not to see it as a product it self.
Of course the planning needs to have the details so you can use it for the control. So it always comes back at the point that the structure must be ok and the level of detail must be ok, and for me this is never the same. (planning is not that easy)

Kind Regards

Henk

A large number of activeties does not realy mean anything else than a large number of activeties.
It tells nothing about the level of control the managemnet got.

The goal is to get the right activeties into the schedule and
keep a structure that fits the rest of the project.
To many activeties can lead to a project within the project
and therby planning to be a burden and not the tools it’s supposed to be.

s

Sen,

The largest number of activities in a schedule I have run is around 40,000 with 60,000 logic links and 80,000 resource assignments. The job was for a maintenance turnaround in a nickel refinery, took six months for two planners and one planning assistant to prepare. Feed off to feed on was twenty three days which meant progressing an average of about seventeen hundred activities per day. Progress data entry was done via an Access Database front end on P3 by the planning assistant whilst the planners gathered the progress information in the field. (I don’t generally trust the supervisors to be completely truthful where progress is concerned)

Regards

Paul Silver

Guys,

My apologies for bringing up the topic on changing logics in Post Nos. 140, 141 & 143.

For those who are interested to discuss this topic please go to below link:

“Changing the logic when project is underway” http://www.planningplanet.com/forum/forum_post.asp?fid=1&Cat=5&Top=16233

Regards,
Sen

That is correct, Joel. Logic review, analysis and updating are part of the schedule progress updates. And I’m referring to the CURRENT Schedule not Baseline. I’d say the Logic should be reviewed, analyzed and updated because Project Team including the client are monitoring the project finish date. Without changing the logic, a lot of activities are becoming out of sequence, thereby not showing the true calculated total floats or project finish date – just as I’ve stated in "Changing the logic when project is underway" topic.


Regards,
Sen

Project: LNG Plant(2 Trains)

Scope of Works: EPC (Engg, Procurement & Construction)

Duration: 36 Months

No. of Activities: 3000 (at Level 3)

Software: P3.1

No. of Scheduler: 1

Takes 3 days to prepare monthly progress update on P3 schedule including logic review, analysis and update.

I understand your point, Sen. But then again, this is relative. I can’t expound on a rebuttal since doing so would bring me out of topic.

But your point of view is well taken.

Thanks,

Jorge

Guys,

From the more than a hundred posts on this subject, it is evident that the No. of Activities VARIES depending on so many factors such as project size, type/classification, planners involved, etc…

For the record, WHAT IS THE MAXIMUM NO. ACTIVITIES EVER DONE SO FAR? And what type of project is this, why this big number? How was it done?

In Post #5, it was stated that a 93,000 activities was provided for a shipbuilding project. Are there other projects exceeding this no?

Would be glad to know.

Regards,
Sen

I really think that the number of activities is derived from the desired level of detailed needed by the stakeholders. More detailed levels will increase the number of activities. And a bigger project will also increase it.

Now, the question is, do we bug the people who execute the works to submit reports? Will they be more productive doing what they’re good at (Executing)? If so, I guess controlling (i.e. collecting project progress info) should be left to project control. This then increases the staffing requirement for people who would monitor/control the project.

After reading what has happened (project performance analysis), the replanning part should involve the people who owns the work (the people who execute). I don’t think that planning should be left to theorists -- the people who will execute the work should have the largest say about how it will be done. They, after all, are accountable for their piece of work (WBS).

Bottomline, we need to perform a Needs Analysis answering the question: How detailed is the planning requirement as demanded by the stakeholders? Then we staff it or go into project procurement if we want to outsource this piece of work (planning and controlling, managing the project information system). Lastly, we ask ourselves: Is the resulting cost needed to deliver the need justifiable? If so, no problem. If not, we need to either improve the system to minimize resource requirements (for the PMIS), or sacrifice quality.

But then again, sacrificing quality might prove expensive in the long run. Even managing the PMIS should be planned (obviously). Again, it boils down to: Fast, Cheap & Good -- pick any 2.

Ideal, huh? Doable? Depends on the leadership. And the budget.

Best regards,

Jorge

Interesting debate.
To stop the argie bargie and put us back on track.

How does a planner monitor 40000 activities on site? Or has the old planning concept changed ? and now we are supposed to be desk bound data capturers. The fun part was always to steer the job on site, getting involved and making sure everyone works to the schedule.

What’s the forum opinion?

Hi Oscar,

From reading your posts, they do not impress me, did you sleep with a planners sister? This vast experience you have must have stemmed from there.

The number of activities in a project depends on:
1. the size of the project
2. the complexity
3. the level of detail needed by project stakeholders
4. the type of industry (mining projects tend to have less detail than fabrication or refinery turnaround projects)
5. the number of competent planners available

Coming from the construction industry, i believe that an activity should have a duration of about 3 days. I have planned a design schedule for the construction of two whole cities (from the ground up). The design schedule alone came up to 40,000 activities. Updating was done using Primavera Post Office. It was fully resource loaded and was integrated with an accounting software. The whole schedule took 1 ream of A4 to print.

However, one does not really have to print the whole schedule during the execution and controlling phases. Lookaheads suffice. And during updating, we just check if the milestones are met. If not, we try to comperss the schedule and look at the resulting resource loading, and cost curves.

It is really not a matter of having thousands of activities. I think that the quality of the schedule should not be sacrificed by developing a high level schedule. Detailed planning is very important. For it is only through detailed planning that you really get to know how to go about executing it -- considering all the design works, procurement schedules, staffing, and actual execution (constructing, installing, testing, etc.).

So if you have a large complex project that needs a lot of activities, make sure that you have sufficient staffing to take on the planning and controlling works.

And I was just talking about the work P3 entails. When you go into Primavera Enterprise, you would need much more peope beucase this piece of software can really address a lot more project management information such as project expenses, risks, etc. Moving from P3 to PE is like upgrading from Microsoft Project to P3.

I’m working on a minesite development project with no smeltering equipment. So the schedule is really simple. Under 200 activities. Very relaxed. Problem is, the people in the mining industry is not as well versed in project management as construction people.

Oh well...

Hi Vlad

pilplan@iafirca.com

Many thanks mate

Hi vlad,

How quickly can you get me a demo copy, I am on a linear project with possibly 150 000 activities.

Regards

Philip

Hi Vlad,

Tell me if your Spider project can do line of balance, or distance vs time

Hello,

This time I agree with Alex and Vladimir.

More on Vladimir since he did more than 40,000 activities with matching simulations (as Vladimir stated in his previous post) using Spider for some structures during the Moscow games.

The number of activities is directly proportional to the amount of the construction project (in USD) (IMHO and hypothesis) multiplied by a factor of K (a constant depends on the planners attitude, extent of relationship with the client) divided by N.

Cheers,

Charlie

Vladimir

100% agreed, fit the purposes is most important.

Cheers

Alex

I think the last respondent who spoke sense was Clive. The number of activities you can handle and update, is dependant on how you structure your project. There has always been this question of how many activities a planner can handle, and the argument revolves around this issue. People independently have different ideas, and it varies between 700 and 500 000, but GF who proposes himself as the major planner seems to think in the order of 1000. There is a lot of factors which contribute, such as the duration of the project, cost etc.

The level of experience will dictate what any planner can handle. Therefore the argument becomes relatively ignonanimice. The point is if you drive a VW Polo, or a SAAB, or SABURA, what is the perfomance. If you doubt yourself and lsck the experience, you will never be able to complete a project on time, which is what we are employed for in the first place.

Perhaps my quote added some confusion? Edgar, it’s from Douglas Adam’s superb work: The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Bernard Ertl
eTaskMaker Project Planning Software

What do you mean Mr. France?...that we’re only Human & not Machines? And they’ve been working on that for "seven & a half million years"?...

And maybe the reason why planning is endless...because of the Number of Activities...?

And what can we do as plain Human? Rely on Machines?

Well, I got some kind of religion too...


have a nice day to everyone...

This thread appears to have now come a long way from the initial question which was how many activities can a planner manage to update.

Gary has raised a concern not so much on what the planner can do as to how he can communicate it.

Again I would say its not Quantity but Quality and how you can comunicate your ideas.

I see a large number of programmes and in a similar vain to Gary have been planning for a considearble time.
Often I can see how a planner thinks in the way he structures his programme how he structures the coding and how he breaks down the levels.

More particuarly I should be able to see what the Project is about without reading the drawings or the spec. To an experienced planner the programme should be all he needs to read to gain a thorough understanding of the Project.

However I believe that since the advent of planning software, programmes have been much harder to follow and as time goes by I can see planners removing themselves from the site reality.

How many activities????
Only enough to get the message across and if you are on your own as many as you can understand and update.

Finally Raja nice to see you have experienced the Clients view and you can see where he is coming from.

Dear all

The following is my attempt interpret the query

What Se mentioned in terms of critical path, risk analysis, delay claims ... IMHO they are project management activities. Yes of course it is a matter where the contractor has to manage his project. That is a detail level program (usually refer to L3 or L4 schedule)

What Gary I think is refers to is a L1 or L2 schedule where the client is manage multi projects at a portfolio and programme level. Of course they will still need to have a details breakdown schedule for project management elsewhere. However, to manage a portfolio, they will need a wider view more than a deeper view in order to manage a portfolio

Therefore there is no correct answer to how many activities is enough for a schedule. IMHO it is more important to see whether the schedule is fit the purposes and achieve the outcomes.

As I stated in my previous post, in order to manage a project you need to cover all the different aspects of projects or program or portfolio and if some of the aspect is already manage outside the schedule, then there is no point to replicate the management effort and incorporate these details into the every schedule.

An example is procurement, if the detail of all the equipment is already managed in a Master Procurement Plan elsewhere, there is no point to load all equipment, plant and resource into your schedule and try to replicate the complete picture. However, if there is no such schedule existed then if the PM wanted, you can put all the equipment in your schedule like date ordered, manufactured shipped, arrived, arrived on site...

If you see a schedule without these detail of procurement then should you said it is insufficient number of activities or not??

HTH

Alex

Well said Bernard,

Paul Silver

Edgar,

There is no correct answer. How many activities go into a schedule that is of a good quality depends on the individual circumstances of the project. As I said in post #88 in this thread “For me, a programme of 50 activities might be absolutely the correct level of detail. Similarly, 40,000 activities might also the correct level. There is no right and wrong, but there are nearly always different circumstances.”

I am not saying 50 or 40,000 or indeed any number of activities is right or wrong.

Sorry I cannot answer your question more definitively, but I don’t think there is an answer that will be right for all circumstances.

Gary

Hi Gary,

If only projects can be managed with 50 activities, then we don’t need these expensive project management softwares. But unfortunately it’s not the case most of the time specially for a contractor on a huge let’s say for $2Billion project.

Yes I agree with you that some clients prefer a high level program but that is for the client’s use. But not all clients does this. For a contractor , who is very much interested on how many bags of cement he needs to bring to the site on a certain period in order that his warehouse will not overflow with materials, in this case a detailed schedule is very important. Another example is how can you know how many resources you need on a certain period if you don’t detail your schedule with real activities and resources. Some people call this lean scheduling. In my experience, it’s easier to prepare a claim if the schedule is "properly" detailed. Even for the client side, they need a deatiled programme to protect themselves from unnecessary claims payment.

In summary, for me this issue of making a detailed programme or not boils down to how you want the programme respond to your needs.

Cheers,

Se

Management of what? 50 - number of activities? You call it management?

continue...
the detail schedule it is.. the more risk u can see, somtimes support, base plate, underground piping hydrotest,and etc. is most overlook items which frequently forgoten even 10-15 years experience engineer... its seem like fresh graduate engineer. So with the detail schedule following priority system / Area is the best to identify activities is ready or not... I do prefer Thousand activities for construction. ...I can say 50 activities is for Management....

What do you mean Raja? They are looking for a Quality Schedule...what is that?

Can anyone define a Quality Schedule? (please?)

Why not do it here pkmb (superman)? this place is cool...