Level 3 – Scheduling With Resources and Roles

2.6.1 Estimating or Planning for Control

There are two modes that the software may use at Level 3.

• Estimating. In this mode, the objective is to create a schedule with costs that are used only as an estimate. The schedule will never be updated. Activities may have many resources assigned to them to develop an accurate cost estimate and include many items that would never be updated in the process of updating a schedule.

• Planning for Control. In this mode, the intention is to assign actual units (hours) and costs

to resources, then calculate units and costs to completion, and possibly conduct an Earned Value analysis. In this situation, it is important to ensure that the minimum number of

resources are assigned to activities, and preferably only one resource assigned to each activity. The process of updating a schedule becomes extremely difficult and time

consuming when a schedule has many resources per activity. The scheduler is then under threat of becoming a timekeeper and may lose sight of other important functions, such as calculating the forecast to complete and the project finish date.

2.6.2 The Balance Between the Number of Activities and Resources

When Planning for Control on large or complex schedules, it is important to maintain a

balance between the number of activities and the number of resources that are planned and tracked. As a rule, the more activities a schedule has, the fewer resources should be created and assigned to activities.

When a schedule contains a large number of activities and a large number of resources assigned to each activity, the result may be that no members of the project team are able to understand the schedule and the scheduler is unable to maintain it.

Instead of assigning individual resources, such as people by name, consider using “Skills” or

“Trades,” and on very large projects use “Crews” or “Teams.”

This technique is not so important when you use a schedule for estimating the direct cost of a project (by assigning costs to the resources) or if you are not using the schedule to track a project’s progress (such as a schedule that is used to support written proposals).

Therefore, it is more important to minimize the number of resources in large schedules that will be updated regularly, because updating every resource assigned to each activity at each

schedule update is very time consuming.

2.6.3 Creating and Using Resources

First, one would usually establish a resource pool by entering all the required project

resources into a hierarchical table in the software. The required quantity of each resource is assigned to the activities. In an Enterprise environment these resources may already be defined for you.

Some large organizations may centralize this function and resources may already be created and possibly linked to a HR Management system which continually updates resources

availability and prices.

Entering a cost rate for each resource enables you to conduct a resource cost analysis, such as comparing the cost of supplementing overloaded resources against the cost of extending the project deadline.

Estimates and time-phased cash flows may be produced from this resource/cost data.

2.6.4 Creating and Using Roles

Primavera has an additional function titled Roles, which is used for planning and managing resources.

• A Role is a skill or trade or job description and may be used as an alternative to resources

during the planning period of a project.

• Roles are defined in a hierarchical structure and hold a Proficiency Level.

• Roles may be assigned to activities in a way similar to how resources are assigned. Roles can be replaced later by resources after it has been decided who is going to be assigned the work.

• Primavera Version 5.0 introduced a function allowing a Role to be assigned a rate.

2.6.5 The Relationship Between Resources and Roles

Primavera has the ability to define roles and associate them with resources. A role is a job title, trade or skill and may have many resources. A multi-skilled resource may have multiple roles. For example, a role may be a Clerical Assistant and there may be five clerical assistants in a company who would be assigned the Clerical Assistant Role. If one clerical assistant were also a data entry person, then this resource would be assigned two roles: Clerical Assistant and Data Entry.

2.6.6 Activity Type and Duration Type

Activities may be assigned an Activity Type and Duration Type which affect how resources are calculated. Additional software features enable the user to more accurately model real-life situations. These features are covered in the ASSIGNING ROLES, RESOURCES AND

EXPENSES chapter.

2.6.7 Budgets

The Budget function enables Top-Down Budgeting at a summary level against each EPS Node in an accounting style. Budgets may be compared to the detailed estimates calculated after resources have been assigned to Activities. The Budget function is not covered in this book.

2.6.8 Resource Usage Profiles and Tables

These features enable the display and analysis of project resource requirements both in tables and graphs.

The data may be exported to Excel or reports run for further analysis and presentation.

2.6.9 Resource Optimization

The schedule may now have to be resource optimized to:

• Reduce peaks and smooth the resource requirements, or

• Reduce resource demand to the available number of resources, or

• Reduce demand to an available cash flow when a project is financed by a customer.

Leveling is defined as delaying activities until resources become available. There are several methods of delaying activities, and thus leveling a schedule, which are outlined in the

RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION chapter.