Resource overallocation is a common problem in project management and can often become a deciding factor between a successful or unsuccessful project. Schedulers use the Resource Usage Profile in Primavera P6 to effectively manage resources throughout the project.
We have also produced a short video using the Resource Usage Profile in Primavera P6, where you can visualize the various options available and how to customize this to your preference.
Below is a summary text that discusses the Resource Usage Profile in Primavera P6.
Once we have resource-loaded our schedule, there are several ways to see our resource assignments and display our labor and material requirements over time.
In the Activities view of Primavera P6, we go to the main horizontal toolbar at the top of the screen, where there is a tool group called Bottom Layout, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Up to this point, we have been using the activities details to display the activity detail tabs. However, once we have all the resources assigned, we can utilize some other displays. Two options, in particular, provide an excellent view of resource usage. If you prefer graphical representation of data, the resource usage would be the option to use.
We select the Resource Usage Profile button from the Bottom Layout Tool Group, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
This changes the bottom layout into two segment windows: on the left is a list of the resources and, on the right is a histogram that shows the usage for the selected resource, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
The histogram bars represent the usage for the periods, as set in the timescale. If the timescale is set to month, week as they are in our demonstration project, then the bars will show weekly usage, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4
The limit line in the graph area indicates the overall availability of resources. For example, the Max unit/Time for the electrician is set at 16 hours per day. In the chart, we can see the limit line for the electrician is averaging 80 hours per week, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5
If we right-click on the Gantt chart and change the timescale to year/month, we can see the limit line for the electrician, is set to around 320 hours per month and the histogram bars are displaying the usage for the entire month, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6
If a resource assignment exceeds its’ availability it appears as a red bar above the limit line, as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7
Adjustments to the resource usage profile can be made by right-clicking on the graph area and selecting ‘Resource Usage Profile Option’ as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8
The resulting dialog offers a variety of data and graph options to change the tools’ behavior and display properties as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9
To return the bottom layout to the standard tabs view, click on the Details button in the Bottom Layout Tool Group.
Summary
The Resource Usage Profile in Primavera P6 can calculate how many hours each resource is scheduled to work, alerting the scheduler to overallocated resources as well as under-utilized resources. It can track resources over a set period whether that is week/month or year/month, therefore pinpointing the timeframe that any anomalies with resources may have occurred, so that corrective action can be taken.
Users can customize their data to their preferences by using different display colors or patterns on the histogram bars. Customized graphs can be saved for use in the Resource Usage Profile for forthcoming projects.