The Concept of Units

Each assigned resource and assigned expense creates units in

Primavera P6. The number of units depend on duration of the activity
and your current settings. However, Units % Complete is only
depended on labor and nonlabor units; material units and expense units
are not used in calculating Units % Complete.

Assignments which create units:

 Resource assignments
 Labor Resources – are used to calculate Units % Complete
 Nonlabor Resources – are used to calculate Units % Complete
 Material Resources – are not used to calculate Units % Complete
 Expense assignments – are not used to calculate Units %
Complete

If you are familiar with the Microsoft Project, it might help to say that
P6’s units are similar to MSP’s work, and P6’s Units % Complete is
similar to MSP’s % Work Complete.

The Formula Used for Units % Complete

The Primavera P6 uses a simple and intuitive formula for Units %

Complete of Activities with labor or non-labor assignments:

[Units % Complete] = [Actual Units] / ([Actual Units] + [Remaining Units]

)

Actual units is the sum of the labor units and nonlabor units, and
remaining units is equal to the sum of the remaining labor units and
remaining nonlabor units.
It simply shows that how much of the units are actualized so far. The
following figure shows a sample calculation.

As you can see in the previous figure, when the units are not distributed
uniformly, the resulting Units % Complete will not be equal to the ratio of
the actual duration to the total duration.

The next animated figure shows the values of a sample activity in

different times. We assume that the amount of the actual units in each
period is equal to the planned value of that period.
However, the above assumption is only for demonstration purposes and
actual values are not usually equal to the planned values in the real
world and even the At Completion Duration might change regularly.

The following figure shows a sample executing which does not follow
the plan. The redistribution of the units is based on an imaginary
tracking method and you should not worry about that; the only purpose
of this figure is to show the calculation of Units % Complete with
changing values.
Units % Complete VS. Duration % Complete

There are two major differences between Units % Complete and

Duration % Complete:

 When units are not distributed uniformly, the Units % Complete

will not be uniform relative to the time passed. The next figure
compares these two percent complete types in a sample activity.
 Duration % Complete is calculated by the Original Duration, which
can be different from At Completion Duration (see previous article
on Duration Percent Complete for more information), but the Units
% Complete is calculated by the current and At Completion
values. Because of this, even if you have uniform units, the Units
% Complete might not be equal to the Duration % Complete. If
your units are uniform and you keep your Original Duration equal
 to the At Completion Duration, then your Duration % Complete
and Units % Complete would be the same.

Thus, the Duration % Complete is suitable for uniform and less-

complicated work. Usually the more you decompose your activities, the
less complicated they will be. You also need resource allocations to use
Units % Complete.
Units % Complete for WBS Elements

The previous explanations were for activities’ Units % Complete. This

field is calculated in the same way for WBS Elements. However, I
recommend you set appropriate percent complete types and Earned
Value settings and then use Performance % Complete for the WBS
Elements instead of Units % Complete and Duration % Complete.

Samples

Now that you know the formula behind the Units % Complete, let’s have
a final review by looking at some sample screenshots of the Primavera
P6.
This plan has only one activity. This activity has three resources, two
labor and one nonlabor resource. Each assignment has 32 units. One
assignment’s curve is “Early Peak”, another is “At Start” and the third
one’s curve field is empty, which is equal to uniform distribution.
Let’s open the Activity Usage Spreadsheet in bottom:

Here we can see the amount of units planned for each period. Now
assume that one day is passed according to plan. I check the Actual
Start checkbox of the activity, reschedule it for the second day, and
input 3 days for the Remaining Duration. This would be the result:
As you can see, we have some actual units in the first day and some
remaining units in the remaining three days. I’ll calculate the parameters
based on the data from the above figure:

Actual Units = 38.4h+8.0h = 46.4h

Remaining Units = 14.9h+8.0h+8.0h+8.0h+2.7h+8.0h = 49.6h
Units % Complete = 46.4h / (46.4h+49.6h) = 48.33%

Now let’s put the Gantt chart away and check the Units % Complete
field in the table:
The current Units % Complete is, as we calculated before, 48.33%,
which is much higher than the current Duration % Complete (25%).
That’s because our units were not uniform. We can check the units’
distribution in the Activity Usage Profile view:
The above figure shows the distribution of the Labor units. Nonlabor
units are shown in the next figure:
Aggregation of these two profiles is still front loaded, which causes the
Units % Complete to have a higher value in the first day.

Summary

The Units % Complete is one of the three types of activity progress

fields, besides Duration % Complete and Physical % Complete. You
should select suitable percent complete type of each activity and its
value will be reflected in Activity % Complete. This value will be
aggregated based on many settings and preferences and shape the
final output: the Performance % Complete. Performance % Complete is
the final field, used for actual progress.