What if you want to delay the start of one resource working on an activity? Yes, it is possible in Primavera P6 Professional to add a resource lag.
Take the following scenario: you have multiple resources working on an activity. But the start of one of those resources is delayed. You want the overall duration of that activity to take into account this resource lag delay. Well, that’s fine because you can define a resource lag in Primavera P6 Professional.
This article demonstrates one possible quick and easy solution for adding lag to a resource assigned to an activity with multiple resource assignments.
We have in Figure 1 our demonstration schedule.
Figure 1
This is a pipe and repair project. Note the original duration of install piping & couplings is 4-days. We also have two resources assigned to this activity, each with 32-hours (four 8-hour days) budgeted units. The original duration of each resource is 4-days, and the original duration of the associated activity is also 4-days.
In our particular situation the common laborer works 2-days to prepare the work site for install piping & couplings activity before arrival of the pipe fitter. The pipe fitter arrives and works 2-days alongside the common laborer and then continues to work 2-days solo, again, on install piping & couplings.
So we need to account for a pipe fitter 2-day lag before the start of pipe fitter work. This is possible in the bottom details resources tab, simply set the original lag of the pipe fitter to 2-days, recalculate the schedule, and the resulting schedule is in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Note that the original duration of install piping & couplings is now 6-days. This accounts for the 2-day lag and 4-day install piping & couplings effort of the pipe fitter.
As mentioned at the beginning, this is just one way to put a lag or delay on the start of a resource assignment. Another option is to add the Planned Start and Finish date fields to the Resources tab and adjust the start date directly. The effect however is identical to using the Original Lag option, and vice versa.
Figure 3
Summary
You might have thought defining overlapping resource efforts on an activity would require you to break up the activity into smaller activities to properly allocate the resource assignments.
Well, as demonstrated, it is possible in Primavera P6 Professional to define a resource lag to account for multiple overlapping resource efforts on a single activity. The original duration of the activity in the activities table adjusts according to the resource original lag and original duration of the assigned resources. This feature helps prevent cluttering the Gantt chart with many small duration activities.