Ahmed,
I asked this question here on planningplanet.com. Even here few planners use resource levelling. So the answers at your poll are predictable.
I don’t know what is the main reason:
1 option - project management systems are not mature and the softwate is not used for decision making,
2 option - people feel that they cannot rely on the software automatic resource levelling capabilities.
I am sure that it is necessary not just to buy the software but to implement Project Management Systems and project management culture to improve the situation with the option 1. Prinavera and Microsoft Project poor resource levelling capabilities increase the number of disappointed planners (option 2).

Ahmet, I understood that most users of Primavera do not level resources and so poor resource levelling capabilities do not matter much.

Thank you for the reference to OTS site. Unfortunately they did not make public their examples of improving Primavera resource constrained schedules.

Resource smoothing may be done by playing with the available resources at different time periods. It shall not be done manually. Actually I cannot imagine manual resource levelling of the real schedules that are quite large.

Guys,
Primavera for all it’s good points and features (too many to number, and possibly just plain too many), has proven to be an industry powerhouse, and possibly the most popular sowftware for its genre.

BUT, all I want it to do is provide a properly resource smoothed computation, based on a constrained end date.

Unfortuneatley it seems that the bells and whistles department at Primavera has most of the say in the way this product is put together, what they need is a champion to get the resource engine up to scratch, at the moment it does NOT do what i have been able to do in much less exspensive scheduling tools.

I cannot beleive the answers straight out of the basic resource analysis and must then carry out work around ’Manual smoothing’ in a what if copy of my project.

All I really want to do is smooth the resource profile between 2 dates (Start & Finish) based on my availible pool of resources. But as soon as the algorithm gets stuck it just uses early dates for the activity. this is not the best as if you couldn’t start it on the early dates the first time you looked you wont be able to do it the second time.

What you need is to be able to forceably start the activity after a predetermined amount of delay, (Whilst still honoring logic), This will provide a better indication of where your resource choke points are throughout your schedule, simply putting them on early dates gives you a front loaded program which you don’t have a chance of meeting anyway.

So in closing, I applaude Primavera for a tool that is very easy to manipulate, and slice the schedule many different ways, the options are fantastic. I enjoy using the tool every day, BUT when my project managers are constantly asking when they need resources based on a smoothed profile, I get very dissapointed in the ability of Primavera to perform this function.

Until people realise that there are better scheduling algorithims out there that provide this type of analysis, and request Primavera to do the same type of analysis, I guess we all have to do it manually.

Andy

Dear Ahmet Cetin

I think we will agree to disagree on this new Primavera software.

Some one has to paint the downside of the product as there are so many people say how good it is, so I will point out the down side.

I think P5/6 is fine for large client organisations who have multiple project to run and I have recommended and implemented it with several of my clients who are not construction contractors.

Many of my construction contracting clients think it is not up to standard. They are either sticking to SureTrak/P3 or looking at things like Asta PowerProject or Open Plan. They tend to be moving across to P5 when their clients have adopted it and some are predicting the inevitable and are taking the easy upgrade path. There are still multi billion dollar projects in Australia still running on P3, the Eastlink project in Victoria (A$3.8 billion) and the Queensland Government Western Corridor Recycled Water project which only recently started (A$2.0 billion), to name a couple. This is the first time in a number of years that construction companies have not automatically upgraded, my comments below indicate why.

There are a few points below for you to consider:

1. Central database. Why not provide the option of both data base and file format, Asta and MSP do and if I remember correctly so does Spider! Asta will open an XER (no import but open) work with it and save it.
3. The Toolbar is not customizable and right clicking does not have the important commands like apply filters and applying layouts. It takes 6 clicks to apply a Layout, and applying or reviewing constraints requires the bottom window to be dragged right up. This is not productive software.
5. The Total Float for multiple projects in P5 is correct per project only. P3 has the Advance Scheduling option of “Base float end date when scheduling” and selecting either “project group” or “each project”. P5 uses the “each project” option and I have not found the “project group” option. I have raised this with Primavera as an incident to get clarification. The only way I have found to do get the Total Float to calculate based on the last activity of multiple projects is to:
- Open all the projects
- Select the default project.
- Calculate the schedules when they are opened together. It also appears that you have to manually change all the projects Data Dates for each project one at a time,
- Identify the earliest finish of all the activities.
- Set a Project Must Finish by Date in all projects to the earliest finish date.
- Recalculate the projects.
This is very time consuming when the projects in P5 are being used as subprojects, which one would expect.
8. There is expected finish, thank you for correcting this.
9. Zero Total Float constraints are not Mandatory Start and Mandatory Finish constraints. Zero Total Float sets the Late Finish to equal the Early finish and the activity will move when a predecessor moves. Mandatory Start and Finish constraints will not allow an activity to move and either positive or negative float will be generated when a predecessor or successor moves on the appropriate predecessor or successor but float will not pass through a Mandatory constraint.
10. As Late As Possible. There are two ways to calculate ALAP, to delay an activity so it consumes Free Float as P3 and SureTrak does, or to delay an activity to consume Total Float as MSP does. All Primavera software only has the first option, not the second. It would be nice to have the second, but not critical. But the down side is imported schedule can not calculate correctly when this constraint is not available.
12. Printing, have a look at again Asta and then you will see what printing should be like. MSP is not a good reference point here as every one knows how bad their printing is. What you suggest should be in P6 is in Asta and much more. One needs to look at other products on the market and not just MSP to see how far behind the norm P6 really is.
15. Necking bars crashes system. I have been advised by Primavera support in the UK that this is a known issue in P5, even after the 4th Service Pack still crashes my machine and some one of my clients. There is a combination of options that makes it happen and we are still working out what the combination is.
16. Setting vertical gridlines to days & hours crashes system. I have been advised by Primavera support in the UK that this is a known issue, even after the 4th Service Pack, it crashes mine and my clients machines. We have stopped using these gridlines.
19. Negative costs. One can not put negative cost against resources. In P3 one can. Negative costs against resources are very useful, especially if you expect income into a project when returning material, back charging a subcontractor or selling equipment and Expenses often not the best place for this. P3 has an Auto Cost rule to allow negative costs, another great feature killed off. I also expect that imported project will not calculate correctly.

And with your last comment without a number, I can only disagree with you. I find the productivity in P3 far greater that P5, especially on large schedules. If you want to see real productivity then look at some of the Asta features, where you can assign resources codes and calendars by dragging which is great.

It is also good to have this type of discussion without being rude or aggressive and I am sure this forum appreciates your constructive input.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Training Manual & Book Publishers & Consulting
www.eh.com.au

KD many of the features you list are standard features of most scheduling software packages.

I will agree that Primavera Version 6.0 has some great features but unfortunately there is a whole list of very basic functions that are in P3 and or SureTrak that are still not in P6 and this is the reason why so many construction contractors are taking so much time to move over to the new Primavera products. To name a few:

1.     No ability to open and save to a normal file format. There is a significant overhead in maintaining databases.
2.     No Activity ID Codes.
3.     No Customizable Tool bar thus making accessing functions Layouts taking 6 clicks instead of 2 in P3 or SureTrak.
4.     The summary durations in days do not calculate correctly when a project has multiple calendars with different hours per day. P3 did not have this problem but SureTrak and MSP does.
5.     The critical path when multiple projects are open are only calculated per project. To get the critical path for multiple projects takes a bit of work.
6.     It is not possible to create an isolated project with its own filters and layouts without seeing every other projects stuff. Open a new project and one gets the last projects layout, this has caught a few people out. It is not good form to print a schedule for a client with another client’s logo in the printout.
7.     It is hard to get at constraints, the user has to pull up the lower form over half way up the screen to access the constraints form.
8.     No Expected Finish Constraint
9.     No Zero Total Float Constraint
10.     The As Late As Possible is Free Float Based, there is no ASAP Total Float Based, as in MSP.
11.     Layouts do not remember the Rollup Level.
12.     Printing can only be described as a disaster after using P3 and SureTrak, it is probabley worse than MSP.
13.     There are no matrix reports.
14.     Many contractors do not require the Enterprise functions as they often run projects in a single project environment but Primavera Contractor has been hobbled to 2,000 activities which is far too low for any serious contractor to consider adopting. P6 is a client package not a contactor package.
15.     Necking Bars is known to crash the system.
16.     Setting Vertical Gridlines to Days & Hours is known to crash the system.
17.     No page breaks with Group and Sort, a simplified version is available in Page setup.
18.     No manual page breaks.
19.     No negative cost.
20.     User Preferences are for User but there are no Project Preferences. There should be Preferences for each project. Short projects require the date & time shown and long project date only. As the user moves from project to another the User preferences have to be changed, this takes a long time.
21.     It will not provide a late leveled schedule.
22.     It will not multiple split activities, not in P3 or SureTrak either but in MSP and would expect it in P6.

If I have misunderstood any Primavera functions I would be more than happy to take advice.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Training Manual & Book Publishers & Consulting
www.eh.com.au

I think spider project better than primavera

Ahmet,
I must say that you make some bold statements when it comes to the ability of Primavera.

I most certainly enjoy using Primavera and I will say that Primavera provides the user with more than enough options and methods of schedule composition and structure, in fact maybe too many.

There are many questions that can be raised over the quality of the resource leveling function, as with just a standard calculator you can quickly work out that there are over 10,000 manual setting combinations to derive answers.

I found an interesting issue with the early dates (Supposedly pure time analysis) calculations, where when using resource dependant activities, and individual resource calendars, the early finish dates of the activity changed when a resource calendar was adjusted to show holidays. Now this is quite correct when using resource analysis, but should not happen when considering pure logic and durations.

The other thing that causes issues is the fact that as soon as the scheduler runs into trouble it immediately schedules the activities that can’t be leveled onto their early dates. There are other project management/scheduling tools which have enhanced resource algorithms which allow activities to delay their start (scheduled Start) a predetermined amount. If the activity hits the maximum delay, it is at this time the activity is forcibly started, and if needed a resource overload will happen at this time.

Unfortunately most of my projects are late before they start, and I have issues with resources from day one, so I have carried out a lot of test scenarios with P5 and have found that the best way for the leveler to run is to ensure that you don’t have any hard constraints and that you definitely do not use the ‘Level activities only within activity total float’ function as this setting will basically overrule the algorithm and put all the activities on their early dates.

I think Primavera has many, many positive attributes, however in my opinion its use in construction (from information I have received from colleagues) is assisted by the fact that the resource leveling function is not used, as the schedule dictates, based on the early dates, when resources should be on site and the subbies just make it happen.

So that’s my opinion, and I’d love to receive some information on the ability of resource leveling in Primavera that will give me answers I can both believe and use.

Andy