we also use Primavera to manage shutdowns. It is not enough on its own though, fro a fully detailed calculation of resourcing per scope item, we have a separate "preparation" package. The one we are using is made by the company that I contract to and is called PDMCalc-SMSPro. It is currently being replaced by the developers by N-Space although it i not clear if we will use that where I am or not.

The Preparation package is a database application which allows the preparator to breakdown each piece of work into fine detail, which is then rolled up into activities for export to P3 / a. n. other scheduling package. This preparation software also includes systemic data such as the airtest system, physical location of the work, requirement for hotworks etc which can be imported into the p3 activity code structure. It also contains a module to manage materials orders and a progress reporting tool, although we have elected to construct the reportiong tool direct from the P3 data base to prevent claashes in data compatibility.

Without this calculation package, I think that the resource planning of a shutdown woud be a very onerous task indeed.

Thus I would say that P3 is a part of the puzzle, not the whole solution, and it performs the part of the task that it does (the resource loaded schedule) well.

That said, there are other packages on the market, both for scheduling and for preparation. All promise the world, but as I don’t have direct experience with any of them I’ll withold comment.

@Mustafa, do you mean that your maintenance prefer MSP? If so, mine are the same. I think the reason for this is 3 fold;

1. We have MSP licences available to all as it comes with our standard install of MS Office.
2. MSP learning curve is much less steep than P3. For all its faults, MSP has ease of use firmly on its side.
3. The schedules that people write for themselves are generally not complex enough to make use of the data handling and presentation abilities that P3 brings to the table, thus they don’t see the advantage.

If only P3 could efficiently import MSP pschedules then I wouldn’t be so bothered, but there are fundamental differences with the way that the two handle data, especially the summary level functions in MSP, plus the 2 companies really don’t have an incentive to work on a communication solution, which is a similar problem elsewhere in the software market, so I usually end up exporting the MSP Data to Excel / Access then constructing an import table there.