Create a Critical Activity Indicator in the Activity Table Identifying critical activities in your schedule is paramount in preventing delays that, if left unchecked, can ultimately de-rail your project. Although critical activities are displayed in the Gantt Chart, (typically with red Gantt chart bars) it not always easy keeping an eye on them, especially if […]
Primavera P6
Stacked Histograms to Monitor Resource Loadings in P6
Stacked histograms are great for presenting the cost loadings of multiple resources. Let’s take a look at how you can use them. Project managers and line managers need to plan each coming week’s work on the project. The more activities occurring in a week, the more mobilization and coordination efforts are required to match the […]
P6 Professional Activity Code Color Field
A veteran scheduler sent us a quick tip about the often-overlooked P6 Professional Activity Code color field that he’s found particularly helpful in his years of scheduling work. Activity codes are important to an executable schedule. Schedulers often find themselves in situations where they need to confirm the activity code assigned to a respective activity […]
5 Benefits of Outsourcing Project Scheduling
The Benefits of Outsourcing Project Scheduling You want to bid for a contract but you need to show that you can create a top-grade integrated schedule… and you don’t know where to start. Well, don’t let a lack of in-house project schedulers stop you from bidding for contracts you know you can deliver. If your […]
P6 Professional Privileges and How to Limit Them
<Project Superuser> Privileges How do you assign a P6 Professional user the privilege to import an Excel spreadsheet into an existing project without having to give the user too many rights? In a recent P6 class that we ran, some folks noted that they could only import an Excel spreadsheet into an existing project when […]
Primavera P6 Top-Down Estimation Feature
The Primavera P6 Top-Down Estimation tool is an efficient way to cost load the entire schedule from a total estimated units and/or adjusted estimated units. Let’s take a look. The P6 Professional Top-Down Estimation feature is a helpful tool in the hands of the project’s subject matter expert. They rely on experience from similar projects […]
Identifying Activity Dependencies In Primavera P6
Activity dependencies in Primavera P6 are a key element in building a critical path for a project. This process is often referred to as activity sequencing, whereby a logical flow of the work is constructed, as shown in Figure 1 below. Figure 1 In this article, we will discuss some best-practice methods using activity dependencies […]
5 Reasons to Outsource Project Scheduling
Should You Outsource Project Scheduling? Project scheduling: it’s something every team needs to do when they take on a new contract. But you don’t actually have to do the schedule creation and maintenance yourself if you don’t want to or for some reason can’t. There are lots of benefits of outsourcing scheduling, but why would […]
Display More Than One Critical Path in P6
Did you know there’s a view feature to display more than one critical path in P6? Here we take a look at how it works and what you can do with it. The critical path is pivotal to map out in the schedule logic; it comprises all tasks that can not delay without postponing the […]
Options for Scheduling Progressed Activities in P6
Primavera P6 has three options for handling relationships when scheduling progressed activities. They are particularly important to understand when tasks progress out-of-sequence. Sometimes activities are performed out-of-sequence. This is when a successor activity begins before its predecessor is fully completed. The classic example is a predecessor and successor connected by a finish-to-start (FS) relationship, where […]