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I work as Owner represntative for a residental project, the contractor submitted a baseline (P6) for approval with 30,000+ activities. It's killing my machine.
the problem is that when I activate the critical path filter, it only show 3 milestones activties at the end of the project.
Can anybody adivse me how to get the critical path?
Thanks,
Ahmed
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It is almost certainly because those 3 milestones have constraints applied to them.
Take a copy of the programme, remove the constraints and re-schedule. You should then have a critical path (unless of course there are other milestones or activities that are also constrained and now show critical)
Another option is to find the total float of the last unconstrained activity, and filter for TF less than or equal to this value
Because you can choose between two options for identifying activities as critical: float and longest path, there is no such thing as an absolute Critical Path. In addition in P6 you have several options to calculate float which adds to the confusion.
If you are using Longest Path to determine Critical Path then your result for 3 milestones only must be due to finish constraint on each milestone.
Maybe your software provide for you to identify longest path to each milestones. This shall open to your view relative longest path in a similar way you can view relative floats using zero float constraint.
To my understanding P6 does not provides you with the zero float constraint but they have plans to eventually make it available. Although usually the zero float path will be the longest path or a near path only zero float constraint will provide you with the relative float values of other activities not in the critical float path, let me know if I am wrong here as I am not sure about this statement. No shame, I cannot be an expert on a functionality I do not have.
Note that under resource leveling your software might display a non continuous path as it cannot create resource links. I don't believe P6 can create such links that will help you identify the driving resources. In addition, in the same way, different calendar and constraints might mask the paths the occurrence of out-of-sequence events might also obstruct the view.
"The longest path is broken when activities are no longer driven by relationships; that is, when activity dates are driven by constraints or resource leveling." - I wonder what is the use of such functionality if it does not identify driving resources.
Look at ronwinterconsulting.com for more about Longest Path.
Because I do not use P6 I cannot be of further help but hope my two cents can be of some help, still an interesting issue for all of us, we all are concerned about how to get back on track contractual constraints.
Regards,
Rafael
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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