How to Assign Activity Resource and Budgeted Unit in P6

Before new resources are added into P6, the following items are to be considered.

(1)  Define the trade of resource required. For instance, steel erection fitter, 25 tons crane may be required for steel structure erection work. See Steps to Estimate Activity Resource Unit(Budgeted Labor Unit)

 

(2)  Check the contractual working hours per day. For example, according to contract, max working hours per day per man is 10 hours, max working hours per week per man is 54 hours. Update the resource calendar accordingly.

(3)  Current resource availability per trade. For example, 4 Steel erection fitters are available in your project team at the point when schedule is being developed. Hence, Maximum Units/Times = 40 hours/day based on 10 hours per day and 4 men. In other words, 40 hours of work load can be performed by 4 numbers of steel erection fitters in one day.

(4)  Resource availability calendar. Suppose the 25 tons crane would only be on site by next month due to some reasons. In that case, resource calendar for that crane should be consistent with actual available date that makes a schedule realistic.

(5)  Decide how to capture actual man hours which will be useful for earned value calculation and forecasting. If Auto Compute Actuals is set as default, actual hours will be calculated and updated automatically by P6 as actual hours are spent according to plan when schedule is progressed. In that case, earned value calculation and forecasting data may not be produced as close as real. The best thing is to capture actual hours spent and update into P6.  

(6)  Resource Code is similar to Activity Code which would help you to filter and organize the resources. Go to Enterprise, Resource Codes to add new resource codes in the resource code dictionary.

(7)  Role is assigned as a job title such as Mechanical Trade which is used before specific resource name is identified. You may also describe skills and capability of a particular resource. For instance, Expert, Skilled and Inexperienced etc.  Go to Enterprise, Roles to add new roles.

(8)  Cost is calculated automatically in P6 if you tick on “Calculate cost from units”. Cost is updated by multiplying the unit rate by the budged unit.

Let’s add these resources to P6.

Steps to assign activity resources are as follows;

·    Go to Enterprise >> Resources ,  Add New Resources using New Resource Wizard

 

·    Assign Resource ID, Resource Name, and Resource Type – labor for “Steel Erection Fitter”, Non Labor for "25Ton Crane".

 

·    Assign unit rate (Price/Unit), for instance, $ 40 per hour for Steel Erection Fitter, $200 per hour for crane.

 

·    Assign the Default Units/Time which is default for a new resource assignment.

 

·    Assign Max Units/Time which is the maximum amount of work that resource can perform per day or hour. See the above item – 3 for details explanation.

 

·     Assign the roles. Mech Trade is used for this example.

 

·    Go to Activity >> Select the activity >> look for Resource tag >> Add Resource to assign New Resources to an activity. Erect Steel Members for this example. Note : Project must be created before activities  and resources are assigned.

• Enter Budgeted Units in Resource tag or Budgeted Units Column in Activity table.

The following figures are used to facilitate for details explanation of the above item ( 1) to (8).