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Dear planners,
I need this very urgent please.i developed a project using p6.uploaded cost to the activites not all.based on that i developed s curve cash flow.this can be used for cost analysis.but how to measure physical progress of the project.because cost cant be used for progress measurement.can i use activity days as weigtage to all acitivites and develop s curve.
Regards,
rao
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Hi Joseph,
Do you store the period performance? You can try to do it.
Ganyi
Joseph,
Perhaps P6 like P3 have this issue because of the inability of their developers to embed the correct math for the distribution of actuals. They resorted to the use of what they call Post Period Performance that in a way fixes the problem for the distribution of work for activities spanning more than one update period.
Say for example an activity starts on period one and last 2 weeks with an actual cost for the two week of $2,000.00. the update will reflect a cost distribution of $1,000 per week. The during the second month the update adds $6,000.00 of costs incurred during the first two weeks of the second month for an average of $3,000 per week on weeks 3 and 4 of the activity.
The real spread is as follows:
W1 = $1,000
W2 = $1,000
W3 = $3,000
W4 = $3,000
But the software will rearrange the distribution along the whole activity duration to an average of $2,000 per week, re-arranging the distribution for the first month.
To fix this anomaly they created the concept of posting period performance, what should be by default on every update.
I do not know how this works under activities that are interrupted several times during a performance period and that the real progress is intermittent and not at a uniform rate. If you set the posting periods to match payment applications periods any small difference will be lost in the update and shall work fine for you.
If using P3 or P6 use post period performance. Beware that under P3 previous periods performance cannot be edited, not sure about P6.
This "fix" can be an issue when you update weekly your labor actuals while monthly your non labor costs. Also if you have the need to report for several periods whose start and finish dates do not match you will have similar problems. Say you need to report on a calendar week basis and also on a calendar month basis, you will not be able to get true distribution of the monthly report. If this is your need then either move to software without this limitation or live with it.
In mathematical terms, if you can "fix" it for a predefined period and it can be any period you want I do not see why it cannot be any number of periods, any definition for start and finish date, it is just arithmetic, basic addition.
Best regards,
Rafael
Hi guys,
I am now using Primavera P6 rel. 7.0 for our Saudi project. I created one project schedule which is resource loaded (manhours). However, whenever I update the schedule weekly, I noticed that the actual units on previous weeks keep changing.
Can anybody help/enlighten me on this please?
Regards,
Joseph
Dear Planners,
The use of Earned value is the right way of reporting progress. However, for small projects where the client may not understand earned value and asks for just a % complete, for the sake of accuracy we may have to report both % duration complete and cost of work performed (ACWP) vs cost of work scheduled (BCWP).
To simplify the above report, we may calculate the weightage of duration and weightage of cost for an activity and take the average of these and calculate the progress based on the average weightage. (i.e sum of weightage x % complete)
The client will have to agree on using this and i again reiterate that i have only used this for small projects.
regards,
Dear Planners,
The use of Earned value is the right way of reporting progress. However, for small projects where the client may not understand earned value and asks for just a % complete, for the sake of accuracy we may have to report both % duration complete and cost of work performed (ACWP) vs cost of work scheduled (BCWP).
To simplify the above report, we may calculate the weightage of duration and weightage of cost for an activity and take the average of these and calculate the progress based on the average weightage. (i.e sum of weightage x % complete)
The client will have to agree on using this and i again reiterate that i have only used this for small projects.
regards,
right ,just follow earned value principle
right ,just follow earned value principle
Duration percent complete is used for schedule date updates.
Earned value analysis is dependent on performance percent complete.
Planned Value=Budget at completion x Schedule percent complete which is dependent on baseline schedule and data date line.
Earned Value=Budget at completin x Performance percent complete which is specified as % percent complete type. If unit percent complete type is selected, progress measurement is done considering actual units. It allows to compare earned value to planned value.
I'd like to mention it again that Duration percent complete is req'd for schedule date updates.
@Gary . Honestly speaking I am guilty of asking for Physical % Complete even on Construction Design Activities. I don't believe in duration % Complete which indicate "passage of time" rather than "real progress".
For some reason, Physical % Complete makes more sense to me.
I have been involved in Design Phases of Construction Projects such as towers and I have been convinced that requiring Physical % Complete forces the designers to think about the actual workload they have at hand in term of deliverables, how much they have gotten done this far and how much workload is there still remaining to finish on the required date.
This simplistically sounding thought process forces a more proactive manner into thinking about progress.
I won't go into detail of why I think so but there are many variables at play which led me to be convinced this helps.
Best Regards,
Roland
"Currently we are using Duration per complete for physical progress"
As I said in my previous post, just using duration is a poor measure in my opinion. I would rather drop physical progress enitrely and spend my time controlling critical path and probabalistic completion dates.
"all the activities in the prog cant have cost and manhr data for example as you mentioned design and procurement activities"
Why can't these have cost & manhour data? They do on my programmes.
"As the level of detail is 5 or 6 even not all the construction activities will have this data and monitoring cost and manhrs correctly is very difficult if the prog has 5000 activities"
Three points here:
1) In order to track progress, you only need the baseline information -you do not need to monitor actual cost / manhours to track physical progress. You only need to do this if you want to track cost performance. So though it can be a lot of work to correctly cost-load a programme, it only has to be done once per project (or at least per baseline). Also bear in mind that most software will let you import cost data from excel, which can often be a big time-saver.
2) The lower the level you apply the baseline costs the more acurate the measure, but the more work is involved. It is up to you and possibly your boss to decide where the balance lies for your project. -It may be that measuring progress at level 3 or 4 is sufficient for your needs.
3) If for example you have a breakdown of the costs / manhours to Level 4, you can aportion these costs to level 5/6 activities on the basis of duration. Typically all level 5 activities that represent a single level 4 activity will be similar enough so that comparing their durations will give a good approximation of their relative value.
Example: Level 4 activity "Mechanical Instalation" has a value of £10,000
Below this are 3 Level 3 activities: "Install Pump" is 2d duration, "Install Tank" is 20d duration "Install Tank Mixing" is 3d duration
Assign the £10,000 as £800 for the pump, £8,000 for the tank and £1,200 for the mixing equipment.
The above assumes you have aligned your WBS with your CBS, which is good practise of you want to track Earned Value
Dear Gary,
Currently we are using Duration per complete for physical progress.all the activities in the prog cant have cost and manhr data for example as you mentioned design and procurement activities.As the level of detail is 5 or 6 even not all the construction activities will have this data and monitoring cost and manhrs correctly is very difficult if the prog has 5000 activities.
please reply
rao
Rao Rao,
When you say physical progress, you need to have an estimated quantities so you can measure the physical progress otherwise you do not have any basis. You can get this information from the BoQ or from your quantity surveyor if not you might need to do it yourself by checking the drawings and performing take-offs.
Regards,
Daniel
The only 2 good measures for weighting activties for tracking physical progress I have come across, which are common across all tasks, are costs and manhours. If you can't use them, then your other options are:
-Duration is in my opinion a poor measure for weightage. -especially if you have procurement and/or design activities in your programme (a 6 month lead time on delivery of a small tank would be weighted as equal to 6 months of concreting works , for example)
-Amit's suggestion of using milestones can work, but you still need to work out what milestones to use, and the weightage to apply to each milestone, without cost or manhour info. If you do go down this route, make sure you agree in advance the milestones & weightages with the client, PM, or whomever the progress report is targeted at. And be aware that using milestones like this to track progress can drive the project to complete activities that will get them that next milestone, at the expense of more critical activities.
-It may be that you have enough cost / manhour information to be able to work out the weightages of groups of similar tasks which could then use duration as a weighting. e.g. you may know that you have x amount of labour or money budgeted for concrete pours, so split this amount between all concrete pours according to their durations. Repeat for as many groups as you can. If you can do this with say 80% of your activities you will get a reasonable measure of progress.
Dear Rao,
You can use Weighted WBS milestones to monitor your project. You can assign as many number of milestones with their weightages and assign them as complete according to their progress. You will have to change your admin preferences>Earned value settings to enable calculations from wbs milestones. This percentage will roll up in "Performance percent complete " column and same can be shown to show your progress. In addition your Earned value will be calulated from this progress percentage, which i think would be more accurate.
See the attached screen shots for detail. Do contact me for additional details.
Regards
Amit Parmar
Check out my blog on Primavera at http://www.primaverablog.in . Don't forget to leave your comments.
Performance percent complete is based on your total activity cost, nothing else.
Each activity is thus weighted according to its cost, and this calculation is roled up through your wbs.
Performance percent complete is based on your total activity cost, nothing else.
Each activity is thus weighted according to its cost, and this calculation is roled up through your wbs.
Dear gary,
i am using duration percent complete.Acutally my question is related to overall project performance measurement using s curve to measure physical progress .my doubt is shall it based on cost or some other weightage.our porgramme is very big not all activities are assigned cost.so we are using activity days as weight to prepare s curve.is there any method other than this to measure physical progress not at acitivy level but at the project level.Even man hrs cant be used as not all the actiivites have manpower resources.
REgards
rao
Dear amit,
i am using duration percent complete.Acutally my question is related to overall project performance measurement using s curve to measure physical progress .my doubt is shall it based on cost or some other weightage.our porgramme is very big not all activities are assigned cost.so we are using activity days as weight to prepare s curve.is there any method other than this to measure physical progress not at acitivy level but at the project level.Even man hrs cant be used as not all the actiivites have manpower resources.
REgards
rao
Hi,
How are you currently updating the activity? Is it based on Remaining Duration? If you want to update your activity based on Physical Progress then i would suggest that you make your activity type as Physical Percent Complete%. If you give me more details then we can discuss on how to monitor these activities. Currently, Primavera does not allow assigning weightages at the activity level.
Regards
Amit Parmar
Check out my blog on Primavera at http://www.primaverablog.in
This very basic Earned Value stuff, and you shouldn't really be starting this work without understanding the basics -I suggest doing a search for "Earned Value" on this site -you will gets lots of information to get you started.
But briefly, there are 3 basic measures in Earned Value:
1) Planned Value, also called Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) -This is what you have already done
2) Earned Value, also called Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP). -This is how pysical progress is measured. You multiply the physical percent complete of each activty by it's Planned value. Comparing Earned Value with Planned value will tell you wether you are ahead or behind on progress.
3) Actual Cost, also called Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP). -Comparing Earned Value with Actual Cost will tell you wether you are ahead or behind on budget. Comparing Planned Value with Actual Cost will tell you wether you are ahead or behind on cashflow.
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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