Integrated Programme Development

One of the reasons why you were advised not to delete or alter anything from the contractor"s schedules was to determine or show critical path (exactly from the contractors point of view). If you think otherwise (critical path), then you discuss or let your contractors explain their schedules as they were always be the ones having the valid strategy to execute the job(s) (as binded by their corresponding contracts). Critical path is only a result of float calculations. Longest Path is a different story.  

Grouping and sorting maybe done using WBS and Activity Codes (and of course Filters).

As Rafael said, updating and maintaining the combined schedules can become very tricky if not properly managed. 

If a 3 Programme with different Completion date are merged in a single Project with the same Data Date, the Longest programme will be the Critical one.

In order to maintain the critical path in each programme, a milestone for the finish date of each programme shall be set.

No matter what WBS structure you use you will still be able to see tha same critical path.

1. Merge the 3 Programme into a Single Project.

2. Create an Activity Code named Responsibilty (Name of Contractor) or Contractor 1, 2, 3. Assign these Activity Code to every activities accordingly.

3. Create an Activity Code similar to WBS used by the 3 Contractors. Assign these Code to all activities regardless of Who is Contractor.

4. Create further Activity Codes according to BOQ CBS. Assign to all Activities accodingly.

5. Organize and Group the Layout as.. 1. Responsibilty 2. WBS (Contractor) 3. BOQ CBS

Related to Critical activity. Set a Milestone with Constraint Finish Date for each Contractor.

Hope this will help.

I am joining this discussion a bit late but I have been and still am in the same boat as Debosky.

I work as a client planner at the momment and they normally request what Debosky has just mentioned.

I am not sure how Johannes method actually works by sorting and grouping?

I have delved into this and what I did in my own case is to ask senior management what there objective is? If it is just dates of key activities they require then the summary can happen to 300 or less activities but I made them understand other parameters like float would be wrong just dates will be correct. The reason been that key links and interfaces is lost when you compress.

To get the real accurate planning info and metrics, the integrtion is best done through excel importing but you must create a spreadsheet and a vlookup system to help with the interfacing. Most clients would not allow other xer files to be imported to there database, but they may allow excel as long as you kow what you are doing. The reason why I prefer this method is that as a planner you may be asked to do scenario planning and one or more milestones or activties from one contractor may interface with the other. And as a client, you may have a milestone that are not present in neither of the contractors plans but are linked to them. Without the plan be integrated it would be almost impossible to do scenario planning.

I don't want to be too length which I already am, but integration when not on the same database is a tricky subject, I used to have procedure for the excel importing but that seems to be lost but can provide one if time is not an issue.

As suggested by Johannes, Activity Coding is the perfect solution so far. Nothing will be deleted from the activities.

In which case, there's no way for you to define dependencies on your own. You had very good suggestions here to follow. Never delete any of the activities as given to you by the contractors (I supposed they have submitted their own schedules for approval as Baselines for their own contracts as well). So if you found nothing wrong with the contractors schedules and they were all consistent and compliant with the contract milestones as defined in their own contracts, then you are good to go. Just combine the schedules, and just roll it up to a certain level for easy reporting to your management. Rolling up means that the master schedule will show exactly the corresponding milestones for each contractor (as defined in their own contract documents). I guess this is what your management wanted to see. For inter-project dependencies, then you have to coordinate with your contractors. Every project is a teamwork anyway.

- "A piece of cake, it is at the updating that it starts getting tricky."

About updating from multiple team members the following might help.

https://tensix.com/2018/01/how-to-export-import-primavera-p6-schedule-s…

It is possible to export the schedule to Microsoft Excel where team members can input their schedule updates. The updated spreadsheet may then be imported back into Primavera P6 Professional, where the scheduler continues the schedule update process.

Dependencies is a builder's or engineer's issue. "You cannot plan it, if you cannot build it" (may I borrow Mike). We do not know your project or discipline(s) of your contractors, so there's no way for now to define dependencies for you. The problem when you define your own dependencies for your master schedule, these may not be consistent with the schedules given to you by your contractors. And therefore may create more problems or confusions during the updates.

I do not know what software you are using.  Anyway Portfolio management is not as simple as we might want.  I sugges you try reading the users manual.

I infere from your posting you might be using P6, if so then the following link can provide you with some help on how to get started with portfolios.

P6 EPPM User's Guide - Release 8.0

I use Spider Project, when in a Portfolio Database we can see the activities at the Activity Gantt, here we can create the interproject dependencies, here we can also assign shared resources, here we can run resource leveling on Monte Carlo for a portfolio of jobs, and so on.

A piece of cake, it is at the updating that it starts getting tricky.  Unfortunately there is much discussion about how to create a schedule but little about how to update the individual schedules as well as the portfolios.

Good Luck

Any Master Schedule must be managed and must include all activities and their relationships across all participants.

Accepting upon every update a schedule file requires everything must be validated again as if a new schedule.  When you accept such files as good you might be accepting hidden changes without you realizing if and the extent.  Subtle changes such as calendar weeks, lag duration, lag calendar, resource demand can have a significant impact on the critical path as well as on any schedule based claim. Today schedules include thousands of fields that can be manipulated unless you verify them all upon every update. Using field comparison among schedule versions is a nightmare and in many cases some fields are not available for comparison, noteworthy are calendar fields.

Best practice to update a master schedule is to get the files used by the software to transfer actual performance data for stand alone projects as well as for portfolios of multiple projects. 

• I use Spider Project where performance data is included in the Monitoring table where it can be edited and then transferred to project’s Performance Archive. Thus, the Monitoring Table is used as a temporary storage for performance data, as a tool for editing data before transferring it to project database. Performance data will not influence overall project data unless it is transferred to the Performance Archive. That is why the user can enter performance data several times in the Monitoring Table (e.g. every day), collect it, edit, verify and only then (e.g. at the end of the week) transfer to the Performance Archive.

If any one of the participants needs to make changes to the schedule model he shall disclose them all for your review before being transferred to the master schedule.  If the changes are few then they can be implemented manually.  If the changes are substantial the best way to validate and to make such controlled transfer is by using the software functionality for these purposes.  Such functionality can be if using access rights, can be if using Excel Files, and can be if using special software files for such transfer. This process can be tricky, requires good understanding on necessary sequence and how the data is transferred, it is not for the rookie. 

• I use Spider Project software and use what we call Reference Books as the preferred way to transfer fields among schedule files. In a glance: We start by creating the Reference Books for the tables to be transferred; then we review/edit the table then select the desired transfer fields within each table and proceed with the transfer.

Updating Stand alone projects as well as Portfolios of multiple projects is not as easy as blind cut and paste of full project files. Someone must have control on the updating as well as on the changes.

First of all, I guess you should be grateful to your predecessor. Contractors or Sub-contractors have no obligation to provide you with any plan other than what is required in their own contracts (which may of course unique from each other). 

The Company (Owner), of course wants to manage the works as a whole. Thus, requesting you to create the Master Schedule covering the works of all Contractors and or Sub-contractors.

Now, what to do? Of course it will be all up to You as the Company's designated Planner. 

I suggest by starting first with the review of the contracts of each and every contractor/subcontractor. Just focus on the "contract milestones" for each contract. And then, review all plans / schedules submitted to you by each contractor/subcontractor, by making sure that they are all compliant with each or their very own contract.

From there, I guess you can formulate an idea and create a Master Schedule covering the whole project.

Debosky,

0. You've stated the EPCs are unwilling to modify or summarize their schedule submittals.  Fair enough.  To be sure, condensing an EPC's schedule from ~5000 activities to ~100 - while preserving and presenting key logic flow - is much more complicated than summarizing by WBS, LOEs, or any other summary-type activity.

1. Johannes has the right idea.  Using the EPC schedules directly (opened concurrently) is the most expedient way to generate the true program Critical Path.  I would also add a fourth schedule, an Integrated Master Interface Schedule.  Populate that with interface milestones and joint activities that drive (and are driven by) the corresponding (readiness and commissioning) activities in the EPC schedules.  Since the EPCs are submitting xer files each month, it's likely that the key database fields will not be static, so you will need to re-build the links each month - I'd look for a way to do that automatically in Excel, keying on activity IDs. 

2. Three main EPCs with schedule interfaces at commissioning but not before - sounds like a fiction to me.  In my experience, if they interface at commissioning then they are interfacing at engineering, construction, and mechanical completion.  I'd wonder how those latent interfaces are handled in the different EPC schedules - just assume the need is met, I suppose.

Good luck, tom

Hi Debosky Wale

I understand that your senior management would like to see an integrated project master schedule of about 300 activities and you have 3 schedules with a total of 12000 activities.

Decompressing the present schedules to 300 activities can be done by showing the different levels in the schedule using sorting, grouping and organizing with activity codes but not actually deleting activities in the three schedules.

Load the three schedules at ones in P6 and go from there.

Regards Johannes

I would suggest that each of the 3 contractors summarize their wbs to a certain level that you will be comfortable with let say that if you only want 300 total activities then you limit your activities to 100 per contractor.

Once the activities have been rolled up into a summary wbs then create activities based on the roll up of the wbs. Then you wil have to get then to create logic between the 100 activities.

After you get all 300 activities into the schedule then make the inter-dependencies between the 3 contractors activities to create the master schedule.

Each month as the schedule gets updated have the 3 contractors roll up their wbs again to the same level as before and then up date the 100 activities again. It will not be that much work each month you may have to only update 5 of the 100 activities. You can do this manually from the 3 contractors rolled up wbs.

You can determine how many activities that you want in the schedule.