How to Use Filter Option to Prepare Look Ahead Schedule

Before proceeding further with the FILTER option, we will look into LOOK AHEAD SCHEDULE which is a common report required in planning.

LOOK AHEAD SCHEDULE is the list of activities in a schedule which will take place in the near future say one week, two weeks, one month or so. The time period varies from project to project and cleint to client. But the idea in creating look ahead schedule is same whatever be the time contraint.

Let’s understand the conditions that should be considered while preparing a 2 week look ahead schedule one by one.

1. Activity shouldn’t be completed – Normally, completed activities are not shown on the look ahead schedule since it has less significance in forecast.


2. Start date of the activity should be within the range of 2 weeks from the Data date. (Data date is the current date or the last updated date of the schedule)


3. Finish date of the activity should be within the range of 2 weeks from the Data date.


4. Activity should be in progress.

Please go through the above conditions once again before we proceed how to enter them in Primavera P6.

If look into the below slide you can see there are some activities which are 100% completed, some of them 0% and some other are in progress.

Now let’ s apply the look ahead conditions which were mentioned above.

Step 1 – Go to filter option and click on ‘ NEW’ tab

Step 2 – Name the filter. In this case, let’s put it 2 week look ahead. Make sure that the parameter (which is highlighted in blue in the below slide) be ‘ All of the following’

Step 3 – Select ‘Activity status’ in the ‘parameter’ column, ‘is not equal to’ in the ‘is’ column, ‘Completed’ in the ‘Value’ column. Now we have completed the first condition ie activity shouldn’t be a completed one

Step 4 – Click on ‘ADD’ tab and this time give ‘Any of the following’ in the ‘Parameter’ column. Click on ‘ADD’ tab again and enter the other conditions also. Select ‘Start’ & ‘is within the range of’ in the ‘Parameter’ and ‘ Is’ column respectively and type ‘DD-1W’ and ‘DD+2W’ in the ‘Value’ and ‘High Value’ columns. Here DD stands for Data Date and 1W stands for 1 Week; which means we are taking the selecting the activities whose start dates are in the range of 1 week behind the Data Date and 2 weeks ahead of Data Date.

Click again on ‘ADD’ tab and provide the following conditions.

1. ‘Finish’ in ‘Parameter’ column , ‘ is within range of’ in ‘is’ column, ‘DD-1W’ in ‘Value column’ & ‘DD+2W’ in ‘ High Value’ column.


2. ‘Activity Status’ in ‘Parameter’ column, ‘equals’ in ‘Is’ column, ‘In progress’ in Value column.

Hope you would be thinking why we gave ‘Any of the following’ condition here. The reason is, if any of the activity whose start date or finish date is within the range of DD-1W and DD+2W will fall into our look ahead schedule.

Step 5 – Click ‘OK’ tab and see the new filter has been made as 2 week look ahead and it is marked.

Step 6 – Click ‘Apply’ tab. Now you can see that the activities which were 100% completed have been removed and all the activities listed are within the range of 2 weeks time. Please note the activity ‘ Multipurpose hall’ is still in the list since it is not yet completed even though the start date was 2^nd July 2013.

Thanks to paul zacharia who prepared this article.

How to Use Filter Option to Prepare Look Ahead Schedule

Do not trust planning tools

We are all using planning tools such as primavera and Microsoft project. However, you should always remember that they are just tools, and the result comes from them need to be verified before considering it correct.

Modern planning tools could be very useful tools, and could be very harmful as well. In order to consider the outcome from the planning tools, we need to verify that it make sense. One professor who was teaching us during the college stage defined the engineer as a problem solver with high engineering sense. Although modern technology helped the project management field too much, but we should not allow it to reduce our engineering sense. I saw during my work a fatal mistakes in the time schedules, just because the creator did not check out the planning tool outcome.

Do not trust planning tools

Information versus knowledge

Knowing lots of information is something good. However, knowing what to do with this information is the key of success, it is the Knowledge.

I remember my first training course in primavera 3, this course taught me lot of information about the primavera capabilities and characteristics. However, I did not know by this time how to create a time schedule using primavera; I recognized that having the information is not enough; I need the knowledge as well.

When I saw this photo for the first time, it drew my full attention, it really worth 1000 words.

Information versus knowledge

How to plan activities with limited resources in primavera

During any construction project you could face a problem where the resources for a group of activities are limited to x number. In this post i will explain how to let the orcale primavera calculate the start and the finish dates of the activities based on resources limitations.

---

1- Assume we have the following schedule which contains 5 activities and each activities is assigned with two resources, Test2, and Test 3.

---

2- we will now add limits to the resources test2 and test3 maximum 2 per day as per the following:

A- Open the resources tap from the enterprise tap as per the following figure

B- Select the resource i.e (resource 2) and then set the max unit /time 2/d as per the following figure

---

3- We need to tell the primavera program to respect the maximum resource limits we assigned. If you run the primavera programme now you not see any changes. In order to see the changes , you need to go to schedule options as per the following figure

Then select the level resources during schedule as per the following figure

Now you can run the primavera programme to see the differences

---

Please note that this method could return a misleading total floats. However, it is useful to estimate the completion date for some activities with limited resources.

How to plan activities with limited resources in primavera

Understand how scheduling tools works-Draw network diagram yourself

All Planning Engineers, and most of project managers can create a Gantt Chart (Bar Chart) using different scheduling tools such as Primavera and Microsoft Project. However, only few of them really know how the scheduling software is calculating the network diagram in order to estimate the project duration, project floats, and critical path.

---

In this topic we will discuss how any software is calculating the network diagram in order to estimate project duration, float, and the critical path. Using the following figure of network diagram we will see how is the calculation works.

---

Each circle represent a task, each line between tasks represent the relationship. For example Task S  need to be finished before task A can start, and Tasks B and C should be finished before task F can start and so on.

First of all, you need to draw a rectangular for each task as per the following figure.

ES = Early start

EF= Early finish

ID = task ID

Slack= Total Float

E= Task duration

LS= Late start

LF= Late finish

---

 

If we assumed the duration (E) for each activity as per the following:

---

In order to calculate the values is each rectangular (task), you should first fill the duration (E), calculate Early Start (ES) and Early Finish (EF). This process is called Forward Calculation EF = (ES + D) – 1

After you Finish all the tasks, from the last one you need to go back and calculate the Late Finish (LF), Late Start (LS), and the Total Float (Slack). This process is called Backward Calculation LS = (LF – D) + 1

You should have a shape something like the following figure

The Green color represent the Forward Calculation EF = (ES + D) – 1, and the yellow color represent the Backward Calculation LS = (LF – D) + 1

---

Try to solve this network diagram by yourself, this will help you to develop a common sense when you are dealing with scheduling software such as Primavera or Microsoft Project. when you finish you will be able to find the project total duration, which will be founded on task J Early Finish or Late Finish, and you will be able to define the critical Path.

Assuming that the project duration is 30, and the critical path is ACGHI, use both of them as a password 30ACGHI to open the following link and add your name to honor board

Add your name to the honor board from the following link: http://www.planningengineer.net/network-diagram-honor-board/

---

Honor Board

Understand how scheduling tools works-Draw network diagram yourself

Task	Task Duration E
A	7
B	11
C	12
D	9
E	2
F	10
G	3
H	2
I	6
J	8