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Min 

How to Get Earned Value/Progress of Each Activity to Overall Project

Once you’ve developed planned value data, the next step is to calculate earned value from the lowest activities to track overall project progress. To measure project progress, list the activities (including WBS) with budgeted hours or cost.

See the picture below to understand how you can track the overall progress of the various disciplines – piping and structure.

Develop A Progress S Curve That Will Make You An Expert – Part 4

You may think creating progress s curve for a project that involved multiple disciplines sounds overwhelming, but with the steps by steps tutorial, it couldn’t be easier. Learn how you can set up the progress S Curve in a few minutes.

Once all activities have been identified and assigned value ̶ budgeted cost or hours and a milestone system established, getting planned values, earned values and overall progress (percent completion) is a straightforward task. So, follow the five steps process below.

How To Develop A Progress S Curve That Will Make You An Expert – Part 3

In Part 2, I have shared the first three tips of STEP 1, S Curvelogy technique - determining the appropriate time scale interval, evaluating percent complete and the basis of S curve data whether to use hours, cost or weighting to get planned and earned value.

Once you went through this POST, you would learn how to get the Planned/Earned Value and determine Percent Complete which are foundation steps in developing Progress S Curve.

To achieve that, try to answer the last two questions of S Curvelogy technique,

How To Make A Progress S Curve That Will Make You An Expert – Part 2

In Part 1, I have shared the three simple steps for using “S Curvelogy”. Today, I’m going to share the first one.

Step 1: Figure out how you would get progress data that you can plot S Curve

S Curvelogy technique is so easy and simple. It is asking and answering the following five questions;

1. What is the appropriate time scale interval?

2. How can I come out with a percent compete (planned and actual) to set a progress curve?

3. Which data should I load? Budgeted value based on man hours, cost, or weighting?

4. Do we have milestone evaluation method for progress measurement? Or, have we agreed progress measurement method?

How To Build A Progress S Curve That Will Make You An Expert

The benefits of having a progress S curve is you are enabled to track project performance to create a visual way to plot information. Instead of going through numerous reports containing information about your project status, you can track your project performance as a whole in an instant just by figuring it out on the Progress S Curve.

- If DONE right, by using S Curve, you can get an instant picture of exactly what your team have already done and what needs to be done in order to complete your project on time.

- You KNOW exactly what is going on about your project and you can assist project manager/project management team to see exactly what went wrong and where by judging progress on S Curve.

Recommended Resources for PMI- SP Preparation to Pass the Exam in First Try

Did you want to earn a PMI-SP credential and have tried but have yet to achieve it? Or didn’t know where to start? All you need is coaching, some help, assistance, and a little support. All you need is some insights, strategies, and resources that will open the key to a whole new future for you.

The good news is that you can learn the lessons learned and the resources I use, so you can save time and energy researching the study materials.

Build A List Macro (Excel) to Search Multiple Work Orders in Maximo

I like using SAP as you could select multiple rows of data, copy it to the clipboard and then use this list to search. However, in MAXIMO, it’s is not that easy.

Say you have a large list of Work Orders that you want to search and export that data to Excel to perform some other analysis, how would you do this? I recently came across a macro that can be used to do this and hope that you find this useful.

1. Save the excel file as a macro file *.xlsm file first.

P6 Filters Most Used in Schedule Reporting (Activity Filtering)-Part2

Prepare Schedule Analysis Filters

Primavera P6 Filters Most Used in Schedule Reporting (Activity Filtering)-Part1 tutorial has been published in the past and we have discussed how to build Lookahead filters. This is the second part that we will discuss on Schedule Analysis Filters.

If you are working on level3 schedule, it involves baseline schedule quality assessment and analysing project status. This can be achieved by using schedule analysis filters also known as schedule review filters. The most common used filers are

(1) Analysing Critical Activity

(2) Combined Filters (existing) to analyse Constraint, Negative Float, In progress and Milestone Critical activities

(3) Analysing Total Floats

(4) Filter for Delayed (Behind Schedule) Activities

(5) Current Milestone Variance against Baseline

(6) No relationship (Broken Logic) Activities

P6 Filters Most Used in Schedule Reporting (Activity Filtering)-Part1

Suppose you are working on a project or maintenance schedule with thousands of activities, then you might want to make the report (layout) for the activities scheduled to start in next 3 weeks, weekly plan(weekly progress status) report, executive summary report, milestone reports, traffic-light report, and schedule analysis reports and so on. You can set the criteria that determine which activities in P6 displays in the layout or project report. With the combination of filters criteria and grouping activity column, you can make customized layouts (reports) for your team. 

The most used filters in schedule reporting and activity filtering are

(1) Lookahead filters

(2) Schedule Analysis Filters

(3) Activity Name & ID Filters

(4) Resource Filters

3 Ways to View Activity Count Tutorial for P6

There are three easy ways to count the number of activities in P6, whether you are curious to know the total activities for the entire project or the total number of activities for individual WBS, Activity Code and filter results.  You should be able to answer the following questions if you know how to count the number of project activities,

(1) Total project activities

(2) Total activity count by WBS or Activity Code ( e.g. total engineering activity, procurement activity and construction activity)

(3) Total activity with constraints

(4) Total activity with the external link

(5) Total major milestones out of overall activities

(6) Total activities with broken logic (e.g. no predecessor, no successor)

How to Show Baseline vs Current Project on P6 Gantt Chart

A tutorial on how to maintain and assign baseline for Primavera P6 has been published on last week. After a baseline is saved, you should be able to see baseline bar against current project bars if your activity layout setting is right.

This tutorial covers how to show primary baseline bar, project baseline bar against the current project status bar as well as progress line. Project team member can view project performance very quickly and easily against the original baseline by reviewing graphical Gantt chart that shows baseline and current project bars.

In case you are facing difficulty in showing baseline bar, then follow the following steps.

Check why baseline bar is not showing, 

First of all, open a project, and then open the default layout named “Classic WBS layout”.

How to fix the problem – Baseline Changes with the Data Date changes

This post is especially meant for beginner P6 users. Some of our readers shared they can’t fix the baseline to stay on the original planned data. The baseline dates move every time whenever the data date is changed.

This is because you has not defined the Project Baseline. 

A quick way to check whether you have defined a baseline for P6 is,

Open your project, then go to “Project” on menu bar, then select “Assign Baselines” tag. See below.

Sample Pipeline Construction Project WBS for Refinery/Chemical Plant

Sample WBS for piping construction project for a refinery or chemical plant may be organized as the following. It is worth to be organized by location wise (i.e. platform and pipe rack, platform and equipment around piping) prior to “Phase” WBS. Timely completion of piping construction is not only depending on timely receiving of engineering drawings and materials from Owner/EPC Contractor but timely availability of the infrastructure should also be addressed. Sometime it refers to work front availability. Developing WBS is mainly depending on the project scope. It should be defined according to the project specific as every project is different, for instance, “Demolishing” WBS may also be added under “Phase” level priority to “Installation” WBS if your project scope involved a considerable amount of piping demolishing scope. “Above Ground” and “Under Ground” WBS can be left in case no underground piping work is included in the project.

Oil and Fuel Storage Tank Construction Project – Sample WBS

Oil and Fuel Storage tanks (API 650 design) are typically used in petrochemical plants. They are large field fabricated storage tanks operating at low pressures or atmospheric pressures. There are various types of tanks such as fixed roof tanks and floating roof tanks, etc. Tank bottom is usually constructed of overlapping steel plates welded by manual or automatic welding technique. Tank shells are constructed from courses of steel plates. E.g. First shell course, 2nd shell course and so on.

In this article, we will focus on a specific type of tank, external floating roof type with single deck and internal pontoon. Sample Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for an external floating roof type designed tank construction project can be decomposed as the following. As tank erection work is only focused, detailed WBS for foundation work is intentionally left at level 1.  It is just to show that foundation is required for the above ground storage tank.

Sample P6 Schedule Layout for Top 3 Float Paths

Once a suitable network has been developed, with duration and resources assigned to all activities, it is necessary to review the longest path through the project before baseline schedule is established. Scheduling Software will simply tell you where the longest path or critical paths are. Normally, a critical path should be extended from the beginning to the end of a project. Review the longest path or critical path(s) using float path layout and validate those activities on critical paths with project team to ensure it makes sense to them.

It is not easy to analyse critical path activities in case you have more than three thousand activities in your project. By having float path layout, the most critical activities or nearly critical activities can be easily reviewed to identify high risk activities when schedule risks are assessed.

When the project is underway, these activities can be thoroughly reviewed with the contractor and prioritized to take corrective action as defined using this float path layout. As this layout is important, especially for the project management team, it may be used as part of the monthly or fortnightly report.

Sample Layout to Find External Links and Broken Logic (No Predecessor or Successor)

Activity with no predecessor or successor in the schedule does not drive the whole project. With the exceptional case, there may be some activities without predecessor or successor such as project start milestone, project finish milestone and an external link activity such as civil work completion of other project.

For example; equipment delivery on site date (equipment supplied by Owner/EPCm Contractor) could be an external link if you are a Constructor with both of you and Owner/EPCm schedule are internally linked. A quick way to identify the broken logic and external date activities is to create a layout and run the report as and when required.

The advantages and disadvantages over Retained Logic vs. Progress Override Option in P6

While Retained Logic and Progress override are the two options available in P6 which enable the scheduler to analyse in different scenarios, each option has advantages and disadvantages.

Retained Logic Option

Advantages

1. It produces the most realistic schedule if the levels of detailed information are available and schedule logic were design appropriately. It maintains all predecessor relationship and will not allow the remaining portion of an in-progress task to resume until its predecessor complete. Fig-1 (Foundation work begins as the work front available, but it is not allowed to start remaining work until piling work complete on the remaining piles).

How to Constraint A Schedule Wisely

Many of us use constraints which impost a date on finish or start of an activity/milestone especially on major event (i.e. equipment delivery date, subcontractor’s foundation completion date, contract award date, project completion date, etc. ) in schedule as Primavera P6 schedule date might be changing whenever we schedule. And it is not feasible to readjust those date changes again and again. In some cases, we might use hard constraints (e.g. Mandatory Finish) to monitor the dead line date as soft constraints (e.g. Start on or After, Finish on or After, etc.) don’t hold the dead line date.

But! There might be a problem when hard constraint (inflexible constraint) is used in the schedule.

How to Modify Activity ID and Name Using Global Change

Global change feature in Primavera P6 helps you to make changes the selected activities or all the activities. Suppose you might want to change its Activity ID and Name (activity description) using Global change as and when required.

In order to demonstrate this tutorial, assume that the following are the existing Activity ID and Name (description).

Activity ID	Activity Name
A1000	New Activity 1 (engineering)
A1010	New Activity 2 (procurement)
A1020	New Activity 3 (construction)
A1030	New Activity 4 (construction)
A1040	New Activity 5 (construction)

To create a Global Change, go to Tools, then select Global Change.

Select New in Global Change Window to get Modify Global Change view