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Joel GilbertMember for 23 years 5 months
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Gents,

Backround:

I recently started on the Dushanzi project in China.
The situation is that the client is using a Chinese designed planning software and it can download into Microsoft project. The price of Primavera is too scary so not even in the equation. Backround of the project is basically devided into Power Centre, Refinery, Chemical plant, Utilities and modification to existing plant which represents +/_ 45 Plants we are managing the BED and DED and Procurement and Construction up to a level 3, probably about 10000 activities.

The questions are:

1)Can Microsoft Handle the size of activities comfortably

2)Has anybody on PP had similar experience and worked with MS Project that has some advise.

3)Does anybody know if MS project China (Beijing) has a good support base to assist the smooth running of this large undertaking, and/or is it even required

4) How does it behave working through a network? as we may be working with 8 planners.

All help and sugestions will be more than welcomed

Regards

Joel
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8 replies

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  1. 0
    Charleston-Joseph Orbe ·
    #1
    Hi Joel,

    What a mess your into?

    Anyway i did MS Project with 35,000 activities. The software I used was the MS Project Japanese version. My boss though I knew Japanes which I said "I don’t know Japanese. I told him it looks like it had the same layout/buttons/commands as the english version.

    It was really nothing, just Gantt Chart with relationship and baseline. An improvement of the Excel Graph.

    Our project management team did not reguired us to dig deeper in the same level as Primavera.

    I hope this will help.

    Cheers,

    Charlie
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  2. 0
    Zhang Haixiang ·
    #2
    MSP has no problem handling such kind of project,but you need prepare something to make your schedule well organized,just like in P3 you need to define activity code...

    MSP standard do not work on network. you need MSP profesional and project server to work in a network
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  3. 0
    Philip Jonker ·
    #3
    just do not try to resource iy
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  4. 0
    Cor de Bakker ·
    #4
    If you do so,
    Make a good start with the structures in MS Project.
    If you spend some time on the structures, it will be as organaised as in P3.
    If Possible, make Resource pools to use for many subprojects.
    Plan in small Projects, so that you can merge them into one or more major projects.

    Plan the plan
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  5. 0
    Henk van der Heide ·
    #5
    Cor,

    Now you have mentioned the key problem of MS-Project.
    "structure"
    I think planning tools should be based on database structures and not a spreadsheet environment like MS-Project

    Regards

    Henk
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  6. 0
    Vladimir Liberzon ·
    #6
    Henk,
    does it matter for the end user if the program works well? I think that the data structure is the developers problem and developers choice. They can choose non-standard approaches and if the result is good then it does not matter for the project planners if the program data structure is organised this or another way.
    Regards,
    Vladimir
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  7. 0
    Michael Bonandrini ·
    #7

    Howzit JOel (Long time no

    Howzit JOel (Long time no speak)

    The limitations on MSP are all self-imposed.

    I've just had to migrate a 40 000 activity schedule from P6 to MSP and (although it took a while), I didn't have any problems.

    It's a trial and error exercise... shift everything to excel, copy and paste and see what's missing or screwing it up.

    Funnily enough, I'm busy writing up a Macro to make life a bit easier and do this automatically.

    Have fun

    Report
  8. 0
    Michael Bonandrini ·
    #8

    Howzit JOel (Long time no

    Howzit JOel (Long time no speak)

    The limitations on MSP are all self-imposed.

    I've just had to migrate a 40 000 activity schedule from P6 to MSP and (although it took a while), I didn't have any problems.

    It's a trial and error exercise... shift everything to excel, copy and paste and see what's missing or screwing it up.

    Funnily enough, I'm busy writing up a Macro to make life a bit easier and do this automatically.

    Have fun

    Report

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