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Units vs Physical Percent Complete

2 replies [Last post]
Tue, 2008-03-04 02:34
Lorne Bussell
User offline. Last seen 51 weeks 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 8 Aug 2006
Posts: 17
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Hi,

We are currently struggling with the configuration of P6 and are looking for some guidance as Primavera have been silent on the matter.

Duration type is Fixed Duration & Units and we currently enter the following information into the plan:

● Activity percent complete

● Activity actuals (using SDK interface)

At this stage we do not want the plan to change the remaining duration as we use a global to bring back the finish date every time we move the data date (wrong I know but it is a business requirement). Effectively we use the resource histogram to manage manually pushing schedules out.

What I’m trying to find out is are we better to use Units Percent Complete or Physical Percent Complete for Activity Percent Complete Type. I would have thought Physical but I noticed the units percent complete differ from the activity percent complete if I do. Is this a problem?

Cheers,
Lorne

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Replies

Wed, 2008-03-05 02:43
#1
Lorne Bussell
User offline. Last seen 51 weeks 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 8 Aug 2006
Posts: 17
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Thanks Paul,

I must say I have been relying pretty heavily on the POINT articles and application help, I will go back to the reference manual and your P5 training manual to try and get a better handle on it. My comment re primavera was more the local vendor, if I cannot figure it out from the books I will escalate to Primavera Australia.

Remaining duration is reviewed by the discipline leads on a weekly basis, what I was saying was that we don’t get P6 to forecast dates based on progress, etc. When the dates are pushed out when we update the data date we use a global to bring the dates back (unless finish is within 2 weeks of DD). WRT manually pushing out activities, you assumed correct, we are manually levelling using the resource histogram.

So far our testing is leading us towards a Duration Type of Fixed Duration and units and a Percent Complete Type of Physical. This however brings me back to the discrepancy between Units and Activity percent complete.

Cheers,
Lorne
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Tue, 2008-03-04 07:12
#2
Paul Harris
User offline. Last seen 1 year 4 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 618
Groups: Content Moderators, GPCCAR Editors
You need to be full bottle on the relationship between the Activity % Complete and % Complete Type as well as how Activity Types calculate. Once you understand these relationships then it will all make sense. It is all documented in the Primavera Manuals but it is a lot more complex than other products but all very logical. This is extremely complex software and requires a significant amount of time and playing with it and reading documentation to understand how it works.

The Primavera trainers, consultants and help desk all know how this works and should be able to advise you. Why do you say they are silent on this topic?

Not reviewing the Remaining Duration at each update is in my opinion ignoring reality. This is one of the most important pieces of data to review and manually change as required at each update as most work does not progress linearly and revising this information will result in a more accurate calculated finish date. But you must understand the Activity Type and Duration Type to understand what is going on. Maybe you should considering unlinking the business requirements and scheduling software.

What do you mean by “Effectively we use the resource histogram to manage manually pushing schedules out” are you using the Resource Levelling function or manually delaying activities to level your schedule.

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