Contents

How do Resource Shift Calendars in Primavera P6 work?...........................................................................2

How to assign resources / resource loading / create a resource plan in Primavera P6...............................7
How to make a labor and equipment mobilization plan in Primavera P6..................................................17
How to Level Resources without changing the Project Finish date in Primavera P6.................................21
How to use Earned Value Management in Primavera P6..........................................................................24
What is a Cost Account used for in Primavera P6?....................................................................................34
When do we use the “Store Period Performance” function?....................................................................37
What Does Store Period Performance Do.............................................................................................37
Financial Periods....................................................................................................................................38
In a real project.....................................................................................................................................38
How to Change 5d Workweek to 7d Workweek calendar and keep Project Finish Date unchanged........39
How do Resource Shift Calendars in
Primavera P6 work?
From Enterprise -> Resources -> Units & Prices tab, there is a selection box called Shift Calendar

What’s it used for?

The Shift Calendars control the Price/Unit for an activity, depending on what time and activity starts and
finishes.

For example, we have a resource AB which has different rates for each shift. We click on Shift Calendar
and select 3-shift Operations.
We select Shift 1 and enter $15 /hour:

We select Shift 2 and enter $18 /hour:

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We select Shift 3 and enter $16.50 /hour

To know what time the Shift starts and finishes, we go to Enterprise -> Resource Shifts

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Select 3-shift Operations and click Modify

Now we can see :

 Shift 1 start at 00:00, finish at 08:00

 Shift 2 start at 08:00, finish at 16:00
 Shift 3 start at 16:00, finish at 00:00
Next, go to the Activity window, and let’s say we have 3 activities:

 Duration is 1 day (8 hours)

 Calendar : 7-Day Workweek (and 24 hours/day)

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1. We assign Resource AB for all 3 activities. Now because the start and finish time of each activity
is different, the resource will have different Price/Unit. Activity Concrete starts at 0:00, finish at
08:00. The Price/Unit for Shift 1 : $15
Activity Excavation starts at 08:00, finishes at 16:00. The Price/Unit for Shift 2 : $18

Activity Steel starts at 16:00, finishes at 00:00. The Price/Unit for Shift 3 : $16.50

So, based on the start and finish time of activity, the Price/Unit will reflect the shift calendar rates.
How to assign resources / resource loading /
create a resource plan in Primavera P6

In order to record hours and cost in the schedule you will need to assign resources to activities to create
the resource plan.

Let’s say you have a schedule like in the picture below:

To assign resources, you first need to create them.

Go to Enterprise -> Resources.
Click on Plus icon to create a new resource:
In this case, I created 4 resources of Material type.
For the Unit of Measure, if you don’t see the Unit, Go to menu Admin -> Admin Categories

Go to Units of Measure tab and click Add to create a new Unit

After finishing creating the resources, go back to the Activities window (Go to Project -> Activities)
Select activity, go to the Resource tab, click on Add Resource:

Click on Display -> Filter By -> All Active Resource to see your resource
Select the resources you want to assign and click Assign button:

In the Budget column, enter the correct quantity:

By default, when you assign resources to an activity, the unit will be distributed linearly. For example:
assign 80 m3 to 10 days activity, each day will take 8 m3.
In the case where you don’t want to distribute resources linearly, you can show the resource curve
column. Right click in Resources tab, click Customize Resource Columns:

Show the Curve column.

Click on the Curve column and select Back Loaded for example.

Now we can see the resource is distributed more at the end period of the activity:

Go to menu Project -> Resource Assignments. We can make the layout look like below:
Now we can easily see the Quantity Plan:
Another useful report is the Concrete Plan Chart.
Go to Activities window, Click on Resource Usage Profile.

Select Concrete resource, on the chart area Right click and select Resource Usage Profile Options:
Adjust to show units, Budgeted and Actual, and cumulative as shown below:

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This results in the report below:

In addition, when we update the schedule with Actual data, we can view the actuals to date:
How to make a labor and equipment
mobilization plan in Primavera P6
In a project plan, in addition to the Start and Finish dates of an activity, we also need to know when we
will need resources, and how many we’ll need.
In this example, we have a simple project with 3 activities, and it’s assigned resources as follows:

 Activity Initial Mobilize : 10 workers and 1 Crane

 Activity Mobilize for Building 1 : 5 workers and 2 Cranes
 Activity Mobilize for Building 3 : 20 workers

Now we will display a labor and equipment mobilization plan so that we’ll know when we need the
resources and how many we’ll need.

First, we need to make some modifications. Go to menu Admin -> Admin Preferences and click on the
Time Periods tab. Edit the Hours value to match with your Project calendar.
For example, if you use 6 days workweek, you must adjust Hours/Week to 48, Hours/Month is 208 (8 x
26), Hours/Year is 2496 (208 x 12)

Click on Resource Usage Spreadsheet button.

Hold the Ctrl button and select 2 resources : Worker and Crane
But all the data is formated as Units. Maybe we don’t want to view the number of units, and
instead would like to view the number of persons or equipment working.

Right click on the table and select Spreadsheet Options

Click on Calculate Average and Base on Hours per Time Period

Now you can see the table shows in number of people and equipment required per week:

On the week of 28-Sep you will need a total of 35 workers and 3 cranes.
How to Level Resources without changing the
Project Finish date in Primavera P6

Normally when we Level Resources, Primavera will delay an activity so that Resource is not overloaded.
But it can also delay the Project Finish date.

So how can we level the resources and not delay the Project Finish date?

We have a simple project with 2 activities assigned Resource A and 2 activities assigned Resource B as
shown below:
If we perform levelling of Resources with default settings, Primavera will delay 1 activity of Resource A
and 1 activity of Resource B. And the Project Finish date will change because activity of Resource A is
on the critical path.

How about if we tell Primavera that it should only delay activities which are not on the critical path.
Then, we will Go to Level Resource, Check on “Level resources only within activity Total Float”

“Preserve minimum float when leveling = 0” means after Levelling of Resources, the activity will
still have Total Float larger than 0. Otherwise Primavera will not move those activities.
Now Primavera only delays activities of Resource B, and the Project Finish date does not change.
How to use Earned Value Management in
Primavera P6

Primavera provides Earned Value Management techniques to control project performance.

The example is a simple project to finish casting 10 columns.
 1 column / day.
 $100 / column
Each activity is assigned a systems Engineer resource.

First, we must create a baseline for this project.

Go to Project -> Maintain Baselines. Click on Add and OK to create a baseline.
We will assign this baseline for our project.
Go to Project -> Assign Baselines. Click on Project Baseline and Primary Baseline and select our
baseline. Then click OK.

We can show columns as displayed in the picture below to analyze Earned Value Management.
Right click on Activity Table -> Columns. Select columns in Earned Value group:
At the end of day 5 of the project, how many columns should have been built? (This is the Planned Value)
The answer is: 5 columns
PV = 5 x 100 = $500
How many column have actually been built? (This is the Earned Value)

We received a report from the construction site, and it confirmed only 3 columns were completed.
(This is value based on the Performance % Complete which is equal to Activity % Complete by default)
EV = 3 x 100 = $300

How much did it cost to build those three column? (This is Actual Cost)
We received a report from the Accounting department, and it said $ 200 / column.
(This value is based on Actual Units)
AC = 3 x 200 = 600 $

Insert the “Schedule Variance” and “Cost Variance” columns as below:

Schedule Variance (SV) = EV – PV = 300 – 500 = -$200; A negative number indicates that the project is
behind schedule. Given that 1 column/day costs $100 it suggests we are 2 days late.

Cost Variance (CV) = EV – AC = 300 – 600 = -$300; A negative number indicates that the project is
over budget. This means that we are currently over budget $300.

Insert the “Estimate to Complete” and “Estimate at Completion” columns as below:

ETC = BAC – EV = 1000 – 300 = 700 $

EAC = ETC + AC = 700 + 600 = 1300 $

According to the PMI standard, we should take Cost Performance Index (CPI) into account to calculate
these 2 values. We can change the way Primavera calculates these by:

Go to WBS window -> Earned Value tab. Check on PF = 1 / Cost Performance Index
Now, although P6 requires progress to calculate ETC (because CPI would be divided
by AC = 0), we could calculate how the overall projects is forecasting using:
BAC −EV 700 EV 300
ETC =   =   = $1400 ( CPI =   =   = 0.5 )
CPI 0.5 AC 600

EAC = ETC + AC = $1400 + $600 = $2000 

Note: you should configure this option at the beginning of the project (before updating).

Next, Click on Activity Usage Profile button.

Right click on the diagram and select Activity Usage Profile Option
Select options as displayed below:

Now you can see the Earned Value diagram. You will use the cost axis on the right side (not the left one).
Earned Value diagram in Primavera P6

Diagram of Earned Value Management

What is a Cost Account used for in
Primavera P6?

In Primavera P6, we have a feature called Cost Account:

What is it used for?

When we assign resources to an activity, it creates a cost. We can then group the cost at the activity level,
meaning we can group activities by WBS or Activity code… and cost will be rolled up. But how about if
we want to group at a very detailed level, in the resource assignment tab?

For example, we have a simple project and Activity A1000 is constructed by contractor A and B.
We need to show the detail that Contractor A will do 2 jobs which belong to different Cost Accounts.
To do this we will show the Cost Account column and assign values for it:

Open the Resource Assignments window and group by Cost Account:

Primavera has rolled up cost to Cost Account:
 Using Store Period Performance

What Does Store Period Performance Do

Using the Store Period Performance feature, you can track actual units and costs to date each time the
schedule is updated. For example, if you increase the actual this period by 50, the Project Management
module increases the Actual to Date by the same amount.

At the end of each financial period, reset the Actual This Period values of all activities and assignments to
zero by choosing Tools, Store Period Performance. Resetting the Actual This Period values does not
affect Actual to Date values; rather, it prepares you to begin tracking new use for the current period.

Storing period performance records actuals for the selected financial period along with earned value and
planned value, so you can track previous periods and compare current and future trends. If past period
data changes after you store period performance, you can edit the data in financial period columns of the
Activity Table, Resource Assignments window, and the Resources tab of Activity Details.
Your projects may be scheduled to update every two weeks, monthly, or even quarterly. To track actual
costs and progress recorded, update your schedule at the times established in the Financial Periods
dictionary, then store period performance at the end of the update period and before the start of the next
schedule update.

Financial Periods
The Project Management module enables you to define your organization’s global financial periods in the
Financial Periods dialog box. Customized financial periods provide more accurate display and reporting
of actual units and costs. Rather than spreading costs evenly throughout the length of a project, users can
view how actual costs were incurred by customized financial period.
If your organization always updates the schedule according to the same time interval (i.e., every week,
every month, every quarter, etc.), you can quickly create a batch of financial periods. If the schedule may
be updated irregularly, you can create a single financial period at any time.

When financial periods exist in the Financial Period dictionary, users can store period performance (past
period actuals) for any predefined period. The past period actual values can be edited for any financial
period in columns of the Activity Table and Activity Details, Resources tab. Past period actual spreads
per financial period can be viewed in the Activity Usage Spreadsheet and Resource Usage Spreadsheet.

In a real project
In a recent project, I receive updated data from the construction team every month. However, they rarely
update data correctly in that period. For example, in the month of December, most of the activities they
update start and finish within December but there are always some activities which are updated for
November or even for October. (They say they forgot to update those activities in November and would
like to update it this month).

In this case P6 will add some more units to November and make your November report wrong. You have
already sent the November report to other parties and it can not be edited. So, the only solution is for you
to move all the October or November “mistakes” in units to December.

You can use Excel to save the data of November and December, then we can have Actuals this month by
taking December minus November. However, a better solution is to do this in Primavera.

First in November you need to run Tools -> Store period performance, to store Actual Units (in fact this
is the cumulative actual unit) to November period. In December you just update as normal. Now you can
show the “Actual This Period Units” column. And that’s the data we need.
How to Change 5d Workweek to 7d
Workweek calendar and keep Project Finish
Date unchanged

After 3 months of entering data, we finish a schedule with 5 Day Workweek calendar like below:

Then the Construction team states that “06-Mar-18 is the right Project finish date, but we’ve been
working on a 7 Day Workweek, not 5 Day Workweek. Sorry pal, it must be a misunderstanding.”

What the he**? Changing an Activity calendar will change everything.

Normally, if we change calendar to 7 Day Workweek, all activity finish dates will change like below:
Now Project finish date is 25-Jan-18.

Next, we’ll learn how to Change a 5 Day Workweek to a 7 Day Workweek but keep the Project Finish
Date unchanged.

Step 1 : Go to menu Enterprise -> User Defined Fields and

 create a field called “Finish 5DW” with Data Type : Finish Date
 and create another field called “Start 5DW” with Data Type : Start Date
Step 2 : Go to menu Tools -> Global Change.
Create a Change “SaveTo5DW” with detail like below:

Click “Change” button to copy value to “Start 5DW” and “Finish 5DW” UDF.

Step 3 : Change the Activity calendar to 7 Day Workweek.

You can change calendar for the first activity then use Fill Down function to apply the rest.

Step 4 : Go to menu Tools-> Global Change.

Create a Change “LoadFrom5DW” with detail like below:
Click “Change” button to copy value to Start and Finish date .

Now we can see all activity Start and Finish date haven’t changed, and only the Activity Duration
has changed. Notice that the Project finish Date is still 06-Mar-18.