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Dear All planners...
In p6 The mystery of Units/Time… I been reviewing the all articles written about this issue and it not been agreed yet on one answer. So, I just want to be clear about this issue and I need direct and clear answer so, everybody can get it.
What is:
Thank you all,,
HANSON
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The Activity’s “Duration Type” determines the behaviour of all of the resources associated with the activity when the duration changes. Therefore all of the resources on one activity are either “Lump sum” or “per Diem”. This is not that impressive compared to, say, Spider.
This is not convenient if you have, say, a drilling rig at $200,000.00 per day and a fixed quantity of tubulars at $500,000.00 on the same activity. In the real world if the duration doubles then the cost of the drilling rig doubles and the cost of the tubulars does not. This is impossible to model in P6 with one activity and two resources.
However the P6 facility “Expenses” is always “Lump sum” so in my example above we would have the activity with a “Fixed Units/time” duration type, the drilling rig as a non-labour resource, and the tubulars as an Expense with a Materials category. This works fine.
NOTE that the same Cost Account dictionary applies to both resource assignments AND expenses in P6 so the cost data can easily be consolidated.
I recommend to all of my clients that they use “Expenses” rather than “Material resources” for materials and other bulks.
And yes, Open Plan for MSDOS allowed each resource on an activity to have a different “duration type” equivalent in 1985. Come to think of it, so did K&H for ICL mainframes in 1972 but now I am showing my age a bit…….
Thanks Vladimir
I am wanting to try and get this solution for Primavera.
Robin, you described the way project is updated in Spider Project.
If you are interested in details put your question in Spider Project forum.
Regards,
Vladimir
This is a huge issue within the software to correctly utilize and monitor resource and cost loaded schedules.
I have posed this question on numerous forums and to some of the top Primavera people around the world including the development team at Oracle.
If you have an activity that has fixed cost resources per time period (like a crane or a supervisor and labor) and a material resource that will only ever cost the same (imagine 10 tonnes of steel @ $100/tonne, it will only ever be $1000 of material). When you progress the schedule, and say efficiency isn't up to grade, and only 25% of work is achieved in 50% of the time (assuming linear distribution for this case) you can only setup the resources that 1 type will calculate the at completion cost correctly. The material resource and cost is constant, but now your crane and labor will be required to work additional days, therefore additional hours and cost meaning your at completion cost for those resources for that specific activity are increased.
Most activities from a construction perspective have material, labor and plant/equipment, all with relevant costs associated, how wonderful if we could update that activity based on the physical works achieved (in quantities of say tonnage) and the remaining duration either by expected finish, calculated remaining duration, then affected the remaining cost of the labor and non labor resources..
It is a very convoluted mess in my honest opinion and does not work properly unfortunately. I and all those that have worked on a process to get it right may be wrong however, and I invite anyone with insight to offer some value on this subject.
Dear All,
Thank you very much for your help... It was really beneficial subject.
HANSON
Dear Arend,
it is not a solution.
The schedule will be not correct because it is not based on correct resource restrictions, and besides to enter minutes when the crane shall lift materials for each crew is very time consuming even if your manual minute by minute schedule is perfect.
Regards,
Vladimir
Dear Vladimir,
For distribution of more resouces over different activities:
Besides the activity start and finish it is possible to enter a resource start and finish in the resource tab.
You have to do this manualy.
Regards,
Arend
If you need to assign the resources at specific hours of the day to a resource such as a crane you can use shift modeling as for example.
The single available crane is assigned to activity 1 a 100% from 8-9am, to activity 2 a 100% from 9-10am and to activities 3 and 4 50% of the pm hours at no specific hours/day.
But what a complication, a shift for every single hour/fraction/combination, if not needed, partial assignments make it very easy for when the specific hours can be coordinated away from the model.
Shift work is too complicated for hourly assignments of a crane.
If too complicated it becomes useless.
Vladimir question is still unanswered, would be good to know.
Best regards,
Rafael
Yes, the human resource and a equipment resource quantities are measured in units but their workload may be measured in percents. If an activity duration is 10 hours and requires 1 crane-hour then I can set that the crane will spend 10% of its work time on this activity and 90% of crane time may be used on other activities in parallel. And if the same activity requires 100% of the crane time it cannot be scheduled in parallel with another activity that requires only 10% of crane time.
When software reports that you need 200% of some resource it may mean 2 units with 100% workload, or 3 units with 67% workload, or 4 units with 50% workload, etc.
My question remains unanswered.
Vladimir,
I believe that you always define tasks first before any resource leveling.
A human resource or an equipment resource (like crane) is always one unit, regardless of how many hours you gonna use it.
So you will not assign 50% of your crane to a certain task (or a boom only will not work).
Counting hours per assignment is another thing.
cheers!
Anoon,
without resource leveling resource planning does not make sense and the schedule will be unrealistic.
Usually there are restrictions on the number of resources that are available. When we assign resources we define activity resource requirements.
My question: how to distinguish between requirement of 2 resource units with 50% workload, and 1 resource unit with 100% workload? If it is the same then it is not possible to get the reliable reports on the number of required resources if some project activities require partial (part time) resource workloads.
An example: the crane may share its work time between many construction activities.
Hanson,
You wrote:
What is:
The default units/time is what P6 will allocate to any resource you add. You can change the value for any resource in the Resource Library. It is the number of units per day. For labour type resources this will be hrs/day. For Materials it will be the unit you specified per day (say tonnes/day, linear meters/day etc). For non-labour resources it will just be a number/day.
Units/time is the number of resource units per day. So for material this could be 5 tonnes of Sand per day. For labour this could be 8 hrs of Engineer per day. When entering resources in P6, you can either (1) state a value for units/time and then P6 will calculate the total units for the activity. This is most useful for labour type resources. Or (2) state a total unit quantity for the activity, most useful for materials which generally will not change if the activity duration changes.
The max units/time allows you to specify your total resource limit. If you have 4 Engineers working an 8 hour day, then you would enter 4 x 8 = 40hrs/day as the max units/time. If you exceed the limit then the excess can be highlighted in histograms etc.
Hope this helps.
Peter
Hi Vladimir,
I suppose you can make your schedule "task dependent"; and then assign the same resource to two tasks, one with 50% requirement and then 100% with the other task. Just don't run resource leveling (I just guess).
Arend,
let's suppose that an activity needs 2 resource units but for only 50% of work time, and another activity needs one unit of the same resource but for 100% of the work time. How P6 understands that these activities cannot be done in parallel?
If to measure resource requirements and availability in % then how to distinguish between two resource units with 50% workload and one resource unit with 100% workload?
You can enter the default units/time value as a numeric value followed by a forward slash (/) and the appropriate time duration, depending on your user preference setting for time units, or as a percentage for labor and nonlabor resources.
For example, if the selected resource is one person, a reasonable value may be eight hours (units) per day (duration). In this case, the Default Units/Time would be 8.00h/d, or eight hours of work per day. If you are entering a percentage, you would enter 100% indicating that the resource is available to work full-time.
Similarly, if the selected resource is a department with five people, the Max Units/Time may be 40.00h/d, or 500%. This means that five people can perform 40 hours of work per day, rather than one person performing 8 hours of work per day.
The module uses this value in conjunction with the calendar assignment to calculate resource allocation/distribution during scheduling and leveling.
Select Fixed Units/Time to indicate that resource availability is the most critical aspect of your project. In this case, the units/time or rate of the resource remains constant, even if the activity's duration or work effort changes. You most often use this duration type when you are planning resource dependent activities.
good question
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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