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Physical Percent Complete in Primavera P6 the Missing Guide

On 07.05.12, In Tutorials, by Nader Khorrami Rad inShare49

Program: Primavera P6 Professional Version: all versions Difficulty: Intermediate Time to Complete: 15 minutes

There are three different methods of calculating the actual progress of activities: Duration Percent Complete, Units Percent Complete, and Physical Percent Complete. The first two are explained in the previous articles and this article will cover the last one, Physical % Complete.

We will also discuss the ways of choosing the appropriate percent complete field in later articles, and will now focus on the nature and calculations only.

The Concept of Physical Progress

The progress of some activities is not measured appropriately by the means of duration or units. In such cases, we use the concept of physical progress. The physical progress of an activity is a manually-entered value determined by the user. The value can be based on either of these two:

On physical parameters that are not applicable inside the plan the amount of concrete poured, the length of the pipes laid down, and the number of light bulbs installed, are examples of this kind. You can always use resources to implement these parameters, but they are not usually the only assignment (you also have human resource assignments, equipment assignments, etc.) and in such cases, the Units % Complete will be calculated based on a combination of the main parameter and all other assignments of the activity, which is not your desired result. So, you can measure this kind of progress by resource units and Units % Complete, only when that resource is the only one assigned to the activity. Otherwise, implementing these parameters will not be easy in an automated system and entering them manually is usually preferred. On expert judgement based on the physical progress of the final product or result sometimes the physical parameters (as described before) are not suitable basis for progress measurement and expert judgement is preferred.

Either way, physical progress is determined outside the schedule.

Two Types of Physical Progress in Primavera P6

There are two methods of dealing with physical values in Primavera P6:

Entering them manually; this is the default method and is done by entering whatever you wish in the Physical % Complete field of the activity. Using Activity Steps; this is done by selecting predefined manual values.

These two types are explained below.

Using Activity Steps

One of the measurement methods, also described in the Earned Value Management for determining the earned value, is using activity steps. Imagine an activity: designing the foundation of the equipment xyz. Its common for the progress of activities related to design to follow steps instead of incremental values; for example:

0% for not-started activities and those that are not completed and issued yet 80% for the completion and the first issue of the design

100% for the approved design

So we will have the following progress curve for the sample activity:

The first issue and the approval in this sample are usually called Activity Steps, or Progress Steps. One way of implementing this method is to limit ourselves to only entering these values; e.g. do not enter any physical progress before the design is issued. By the time we issue the design, we can enter 80% as the physical progress and again, we wont increase it until it is approved, which makes our physical progress 100%. Primavera P6 has a feature which makes this kind of progressing easier. We can define the activity steps and use them for entering progress and thus to update Physical % Complete on the activitiy. This will prevent us from making mistakes by automatically limiting us to the predefined values. The first thing to do is to get the settings right or specifically the setting which enables progress via activity steps. 1) Click on the Projects item of the Enterprise menu to open the Projects window.

2) After selecting the project in the upper part of the window, the Activity percent complete based on activity steps option should be activated to enable the activity steps. From now on, you cannot enter manual physical % complete values for the activities which have defined steps. However, its still possible to enter manual values for activities which do not have steps. So, dont worry too much about this setting; you can always keep it active. The next thing to do is to define steps for the activities. The following screen shows a plan with two activities.

The activity A1 is selected. The settings we will deal with are in the Steps Tab of the Details pane. If you dont have the pane, select View| Show on Bottom| Details. If you dont have the Steps tab, right click on a tab and select Customize Activity Details then activate the Steps item. Now, it is time to define steps. Our sample steps are 80% progress for the first issue and the remaining 20% for the approval. 3) To add a new step, click on the Add button (bottom-left corner of the screen).

4) Enter the name of the step and repeat clicking on the Add button and entering the names for the rest of the steps.

Now the two sample steps have been entered. These steps have the same weight now; each will increase Physical % Complete by 50%. 5) In order to define other weights, right click on the Step Name heading (or any other headings) and select Customize Step Columns. By this, a dialog box opens and the Step Weight column can be added to the layout.

6) Now predefined progress of each step can be entered in the Step Weight column as shown.

Now we are finished defining the steps for activity A1. You might have many activities with the same steps. In this case, select all steps of activity A1 (click on a step, then press Ctrl+A keys to select all), then right click on a blank space of the steps pane and select Create Template. By this, the following dialog box appears:

Enter a desired name (General Design Steps in this sample) and click on the OK button. Now a saved template for these steps is created and available for further use. Now lets select activity A2.

7) This activity is supposed to have the same steps as activity A1. We can use the previously made template to create them. Click on the Add From Template button and the following dialog box will appear.

8) Double click on the General Design Steps item to continue.

The same steps are added to the activity.

Entering Physical % Complete

1) The first thing is to select the activity, go to the Status tab of the Details pane, check the Started checkbox, and mark the activity as started. This means that the activity is started and ready to receive its physical progress.

2) In this example, the activity A3 is marked as started. This activity does not have steps, so the Physical % Complete can be entered manually. Simply click on the cell and enter the value.

For those activities which have steps (A1 and A2 in this sample), you cannot enter manual values and should use the steps instead (only if you have activated the steps as described in the beginning of this very article). In order to do so, go to the Steps tab of the Details pane after marking the activity as started. Just check the Completed checkboxes of the completed steps.

Physical % Complete for WBS Elements

WBS elements usually roll-up the information of their underlying activities; e.g. the cost of a WBS element is the sum of the costs of its children and its Start is equal to the minimum of the starts of its children. The way each value is rolled-up depends on the type and nature of the value and even some of them do not accept roll-ups by their nature. The Physical % Complete is one of those fields that are not rolled-up, because its based on external parameters, unknown to the software, and there is no way of equalizing them and providing a summarization. The thing you should have in mind is that you are not supposed to use activity percent completes for the WBS elements, even if they have rolled-up values (like Duration % Complete and Units % Complete). The suitable field for this purpose is Performance % Complete which will be discussed in later articles.

Summary

The concept of the Physical % Complete is straightforward. Its a way of entering manual progresses based on expert judgment or other external factors. These values can be dynamically determined in each control period or follow a predefined set of values (activity steps). One last thing you should have in mind is that the planned progress, which is provided by the Schedule % Complete and planned value fields, does not incorporate steps and is based on dates and units (see Schedule % Complete article for more information). This can cause some amounts of false variation between your actual progress and planned progress. These variations are usually too little to be taken into consideration. But if you believe they are large for your project or you want to be as precise as possible, you should avoid activity steps and decompose the activity into more simple activities which are possible to be tracked based on duration or units.

Final Note
An interesting use of Physical % Complete is that you can have appropriate Global Changes in place, which calculate progresses and put them in the field. Suppose you have more than one resource assigned to each activity and are supposed to use one of them for the progress. An appropriate Global Change can calculate the value automatically and enter it in the field. Another example is when you need a Duration Percent Complete similar to that of Microsoft Project, which is based on the At Completion Duration instead of Original Duration. You can have another Global Change to calculate this value and present it as Physical % Complete.

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How To Find Relationship Lag in Primavera P6

On 05.07.12, In Tutorials, by Michael Lepage inShare5

Program: Oracle Primavera P6 Professional Version: any Difficulty: Intermediate Time to Complete: 15 minutes

Its not easy to find Relationship Lag in Primavera P6 project schedules. There arent really any features to highlight lag. But understanding how leads or lags are used on your project is an important part of really knowing your schedule. We need a process to root out any relationship lags in P6.

Whats wrong with using Relationship Lag in my schedule?

The use of Relationship lag is widely discussed on Scheduling and Project Controls discussion boards. The concensus and best practice is that the use of relationship lag should be minimal if its used at all. Why? According to the Practice Standard for Scheduling, a document prepared by scheduling experts at the Project Management Institute, using Relationship leads or lags add significant schedule risk to a project. The main reason is the lack of visibility of lag delays on project schedules. Lag time is hard to identify and document it isnt obvious when looking at the Gantt Chart or when analyzing a schedules dates. When lag time is used on a schedule, it is very rarely documented why the delay was added, causing construction managers to scratch their heads. Time IS money, after all. As a best practice, any lag should always be documented in a Notebook topic on the activity. Or better yet, follow PMIs standard and use full activities to represent lead/lag delays. This approach makes leads/lags very visible on a schedule and also allows for more flexibility.

Its common for less experienced planners to submit schedules with lag. In Primavera P6, we really need to be able to find out if a schedule uses relationship lag. Unfortunately, inside the Activity screens in P6, there seems to be no way to sort or filter activities by Lag. So well need another approach, one that is easy and reusable.

Building a Reusable Relationship Lag Report in Primavera P6

Its pretty easy to build reports in Primavera P6. And the reporting features are able to report on a projects relationships. Using Filters, we can create a nice report that shows only Activities that have relationships with leads or lags. Heres how:

Step 1 Create a New Report

Navigate over to the Primavera P6 Reports screen. Click the Add button on the Command Bar to add a new report to your database.

Step 2 Choosing the Report Subject

When the Report Wizard comes up, click Next to create a new Report. On the following screen, select the Activity Relationships subject area and click next.

Step 3 Choose Columns

Select the columns as shown. Click OK. **NOTE: Ive discovered that both the Predecessor ID and Successor ID columns will always be renamed by Primavera to Activity ID. If you click OK after selecting columns and go back to the column choosing screen, these two columns are renamed to ID. I cant change them either.cest la vie!

Step 4 Turn Off Group and Sort

Click the Group and Sort button and set it to <none> or leave the Group By field blank. Click OK.

Step 5 Setting a Custom Filter for Lag

Click the Filter button. In the Parameter dropdown, find and select Lag. Set the conditional dropdown to is not equal to and type 0 in the Value column. This combination will filter for both leads (ie: negative lags) and lags. Click OK to save your Filer.

Step 6 Saving the Primavera P6 Lag Report

Click Next. On the following screen, name your report Relationship Lag Report. Click Next. Before you click Run Report, click Next again and Save your report. Click Finish to close the Wizard. Its ideal to Save your report first before running it. It may not run if you do not have a project open first.

Step 7 Open a Project and Run the Primavera P6 Lag Report

Open a Project and then run your report. You should see some output similar to the above.

Wrap-up
Having this report pre-built will help you be prepared anytime you need to run some analysis on a schedule, perhaps even a schedule a contractor has submitted. So keep it in your arsenal of analysis tools. Its worth mentioning that another approach that works is to export your project data to Excel, including the relationships table. You can then use the filtering tools in Excel to zone in on relationships that have lead or lag delays. I prefer to avoid Excel in this case because the export takes too many clicks to produce the proper dataset. This report can be run with 3-4 mouse clicks max with the same end result. Now remember to follow the best practice mentioned in the intro. Avoid using lag or lead altogether in your schedules. Instead you should use a well-defined activity to represent any lag or lead delay in your project plan. Everyone will be much happier for it!

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How to Convert a Projects WBS to Activity Codes in Oracle Primavera P6

On 12.13.11, In Tutorials, by Mimoune Djouallah inShare11

Program: Version: Difficulty: Time to Complete: 1 hour

Download Tutorial Assets

Download the files to complete this tutorial on your own.

Project Plan (.xer) : Apex xer.zip P6 SDK Excel Tool : Dictionary6v7.xls (Please note that this tool was created by Oracle Primavera and we do not provide support on its use) WBS to Activity Code xls : WBS-To-Activity-Code-P6.xls

The idea of this tutorial was inspired by a question in LinkedIn forum, a planner have received a primavera schedule using WBS, as in the oil and gas industry it is very useful to have different layouts to present the schedule to different audience, and more importantly the Work breakdown structure is based on geographic area in the construction phase, and systems in the commissioning phase, the tutorial will use the APEX sample schedule to convert a WBS to activities codes, it is assumed you have already worked with the Primavera P6 SDK.

Step 1 Open the schedule.

The APEX schedule organizedby the default classic WBS layout.

Step 2 Export WBS Dictionary to Excel

In P6, goto the WBS screen. Customize the columns so only WBS code, and WBS name are displayed.

Highlight all WBS rows, copy and paste the two columns to the worksheet WBS dictionary of the WBS-to-Activity-Code-P6.xls file (see Tutorial Assets). Make sure that your WBS structure is well organized (*). It means every level

must have the same exact number of characters. In this regards P3 was more rigorous, as the structure of the WBS is defined first. In P6, it is generated automatically. It is very easy to edit the WBS Code, to have the same number of character for every level. The excel formula in column F generates a unique list of the number of characters sort in ascending order, it is an array formula (thats why there is curly braces between the formula, if not, use CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to execute it). In this example, WBS code with four characters -eg APEX, this is level 1. WBS Code with 7 characters eg APEX.AM, this is level 2. Of course, L1, L2 are just used as an example, in a real project, levels are usually defined as project, phase, sub-project, area, discipline, items, etc.

Step 3 Export WBS Activity Assignment to Excel

Remove the Group and Sort by WBS, in columns add WBS and Activity ID.

Copy and paste the two columns to the excel worksheet Activity codes per Activity in columns A and B. Excel columns C through G will be generated automatically, by default, if no code is available, a - is assigned.

Step 4 Create Activities Codes Dictionary and Import to P6

First define the new project activity codes in P6 that will represent the WBS.

Back in your excel file, goto the activity code dictionary worksheet. Using an excel pivot table, the excel file will generate an activities codes dictionary that we have to load back in P6 on this worksheet.

Using the dictionary excel utility (Dictionary6v7.xls instructions on using this file can be obtained from http://support.oracle.com. Search for dictionary6v7.xls), click on Get Activity Codes (you need the SDK to be installed and configured).

/p> Copy and paste the activities dictionary from the excel file, for every level add a dummy - without a code description, so P6 will not show the ugly no code when you organize by activity code for activities without a code assigned.

Now you can import back to P6 the activities codes dictionary (click Set Activity Codes on the Login tab). Make sure you import to the right project.

Now your project is loaded with the activity codes dictionary.

Step 5 Import activities codes assignment to P6

Make a new Excel export. Select the newly defined activities codes (L1-L5) as columns in your layout.

Open the exported excel file.

Use a Vlookup formula to retrieve the values of L1, L2, L3, L4, L5 from the excel sheet Activity codes per Activity. In the Excel file, there is sample vlookup sheet to show how the formula works.

Import the updated export file back to P6. The WBS is now transfered to the L1-L5 project activity codes.

Step 6 Enjoy.
Now, with a new layout the schedule is organized by activity codes.

Wrap Up
Primavera P6 has very strong activity codes capabilities. Unfortunately, many planners use only the WBS as it is very easy and intuitive, but once you start tailoring the schedule, printing for a different purpose and audience, in a way that make a sense to them, activity codes should be used as Primavera only permits one WBS per project.

(*) : if your WBS has not the same number of character for every level, you can use alternative method, explained here.