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

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

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

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

Creating a fictive program that you cannot schedule/status is useless, so stick to what P3 suggested on revising the planning unit. KIS

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

P3 HELP say on revising the planning unit.

"If you want to change the planning unit of a project, you can copy it and select a different planning unit.

When you copy a project project and change the planning unit, the duplicate project contains the same number of calendars and their associated IDs as the original project. The duplicate calendars, however, specify continuous work-time--every hour, day, week, or month is available for work, based on the new planning unit. Define the workweek for calendars in the duplicateed project. P3 copies nonworkperiods and exceptions from the original project to the duplicate project.

P3 does not change activity durations when you change the planning unit for a project. Use the Global Change (Tools menu) or import/Export (Tools, Project Utilities menu) commands to revise the activity durations, or adjust the activity bar with the mouse to reflect the new durations."

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.

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

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.

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.

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