A common challenge for managers is keeping track of the availability of resources assigned to their projects. This may become particularly difficult during the summer months when resources typically go on vacation. If this is your situation then you may want to create personal calendars for your resources.
Usually, a project will have one calendar and all activities and resources are based on that calendar. The resource allocation of individual resources may be tracked across multiple activities in a project and/or multiple projects. In addition to this Primavera P6 has the ability to create calendars specifically for individual resources to note their unavailability during vacation time off.
This article describes and demonstrations how to create personal calendars for resources specifically to track their availability and planned vacation time off.
The project for this personal calendar demonstration is the pipe repair and improvement project displayed in Figure 1. It’s also worth noting that the activities shown in this example are of type Task Dependent. The behavior illustrated here would be different if the activities were of type Resource Dependent. Resource Dependent activities will adjust their duration when the project is rescheduled if one of its resource’s personal calendar is updated with nonworking time.
Figure 1
Note that all activities in this schedule are critical, so no activity may be delayed without delaying the entire project. Also respective activities have been assigned labor and material resources. We view the resource usage profile of each resource in the bottom pane to verify that there are no resource over-allocations. In particular, we look at the resource allocation of the pipe insulator, Figure 2.
Figure 2
The pipe insulator usage profile shows that the pipe insulator is scheduled to work four 8-hour days for this project. This is compatible to the pipe insulator’s 8-hour per day maximum daily work limit.
It appears that this project is perfectly allocated; none of the resources are showing over allocation issues. However, the pipe insulator just requested vacation time off for August 11th through August 15th. To see the effect this vacation request has on the pipe insulator’s resource allocation we create a personal calendar for the pipe insulator. Go into the Resources view and highlight the appropriated resource (in this example – pipe insulator resource. In the bottom pane select the details tab. In the profile section notice the calendar is ‘Corporate – Standard Full Time’ and the Default Units/Time is 8.0h/d. Select the ‘Create Personal Calendar’ button. The resource calendar will appear, Figure 3.
Figure 3
This resource calendar is based on the Corporate – Standard Full Time’ calendar, which is the default calendar for this project. The Workweek and Time Periods remain the same. The outstanding issue is the vacation time that must be scheduled. According to the pipe insulators vacation plans in the month of August, set August 10th through August 14th as nonwork days, Figure 4. Click OK.
Figure 4
Now view the resource usage profile of the pipe insulator, Figure 5.
Figure 5
We now see that the pipe insulator is 8-hours over allocated on Thursday, August 13th and Friday, August 14th. This over allocation is directly caused by the pipe insulators scheduled vacation. As this is our only pipe insulator the only way to resolve this over allocation is by adjusting the start date of the Insulate Piping activity. Adjust the start date of the Insulate Piping activity and recalculate the schedule, Figure 6.
Figure 6
Note that the resource usage profile now shows that the pipe insulator is appropriately allocated. Notice also that in order to delay the Insulate Piping task we had to insert a ‘Start on or After’ constraint on this activity. This in turn provided float to several activities on the critical path. Because of this constraint the critical path now begins with Insulate Piping.
Now that we have our pipe insulator resource calendar, we may want to make additional changes to it. To modify the pipe insulator resource calendar select Enterprise | Calendars, and then set the Resource toggle on, Figure 7.
Figure 7
Click the modify button, and you may add additional vacation days, if required. You may also add work day exceptions, where, for example, your resource is scheduled to work 10-hours on August 21st instead of the usual 8-hour day.
Summary
Primavera P6’s resource calendars are helpful when the scheduled work hours of a particular resource divert from the project default calendar. Here you may schedule vacation days or work day exceptions for a specific resource. Resource calendars are not global, but may be converted to a global calendar.
Once converted though they will not convert back. You may, however, readily modify an existing resource calendar. So resource calendars enable for the scheduling and editing of personnel specific deviations from the project calendar.