Primavera P6 Professional has the functionality to assign each activity an activity primary resource. An activity’s primary resource is the person responsible for coordinating an activity’s work. In Primavera P6 Professional roles are assigned to each activity and then resources to these roles. Each activity has a primary resource assignment.
So it is possible to report on critical activities and responsible resources. And each resource has contact information, such as email and phone number. In this way project managers can quickly contact responsible resources and confirm the status of activities critical to the success of the project.
Proactive project managers using Primavera P6, will want to keep tabs on all critical activities in the schedule. Wouldn’t it be great to have a list of all the critical activities and the person in charge of each?
This article demonstrates a quick tip on how to assign a primary resource to each P6 activity and then retrieve this primary resource’s contact information.
Activity Primary Resources In Primavera P6
We have in Figure 1 our demonstration project.
Figure 1
This project is an underground pipe installation project. Each activity in this schedule is assigned one or more roles or trade skills. Each trade skill is then assigned an individual resource that performs that trade skill on the respective activity.
We want each activity to have an assigned primary resource. The primary resource, again, is the person in charge of that particular activity effort. Primavera P6 Professional does not assign a primary resource to role assignments. These roles must be populated with actual resources for the assignment of a primary resource.
Primavera P6 Professional specifies the first resource assigned to an activity as the primary resource. Schedulers may then manually change the primary resource in the bottom details resource tab for each respective activity.
In Figure 1 we choose the pipe fitter, Curt Cousins, as the primary resource for the install couplings effort. The project manager would then contact Curt Cousins to discuss execution and progress of the install couplings activity.
The scheduler can list in the activity table, Figure 1, the role IDs, resource IDs, and the activity primary resource. In this way the scheduler can quickly find the responsible person for each activity in the schedule. A helpful report is to filter all the critical activities and list the primary resource of each critical activity.
Once the primary resource of an activity is identified the project manager can then retrieve the primary resource contact information from the resource database. Figure 2 displays resources from the Quality Engineering subcontractor, which are assigned to the underground pipe installation project.
Figure 2
The email address and office phone for Curt Cousins are in the bottom details general tab. It is also possible to list the email address and office phone number directly in the resource table.
Summary
Roles or trade skills are first assigned to schedules in the planning phase. Later the line manager assigns resources to each role. Each activity at this point is assigned an activity primary resource, which is the person responsible for the activity effort.
The scheduler must confirm the activity primary resource of each activity and change the responsible person, if necessary. The scheduler may then provide the project manager a report of all critical activities and their associated primary resource.
The contact information of each resource is readily available in the resource database. In this way Primavera P6 Professional provides the project manager the primary resource information required to keep tabs on the most recent situation of a critical activity directly from the team member responsible for that respective effort.