Cost Loading in P6

Hi Praju
As we Export/Import projects with costs (from units and expenses) and I never realized what you described, I checked. Cost were transferred correctly. I checked the xer-file and the copied project.
Your other item - change of parameters - I don’t understand. When did it happen?
One situation might be: After an activity was started you should not modify those parameters under "general". This may destroy the activity.
Regards
Dieter

Say an Activity of Install foundation which is intially of 10 duration and has a cost of $100.

What happens is if i change the original duration form 10 days to 15 days or less the costs becomes zero.

Also when I export the project as an xer file the costs doesnt seems to come into that..but when i do the same in excel costs comes..

hope i made myself clear now

Hi Praju
I’m sorry, but still I don’t really understand your item. How do you assign costs? Please describe.
What kind of costs are they:
- labour
- non-labour
- material
- Expenses
Regards
Dieter

its labour cost

I go into resources add a resource lets say A

and this A is assigned to variuous activites and Then I go into budgeted cost and assign a cost to that activity..

Maybe i am doing a blunder but appreciate if you could help me sort this out

Primavera takes costs from resource master data. But by the parameter "Rate Source" you can assign an individual rate PER HOUR.
As follows from "Hint Help":
"Budgeted Cost: The budgeted cost for the resource assignment on the activity. Computed as Budgeted Cost = Budgeted Units * Price per Time."
Primavera here is misleading: It allows to enter a budgeted price for the assignment. But if you’ll recalculate costs by scheduling (with the appropriate parameter), the function (under Tools), or by modifying the duration it will be recalculated based upon "price per unit".

So does it mean that you cannot make the budgeted cost as fixed

Praju,
I too have previously been confused with the way in which costs and budget was both stored and calculated in Primavera;

I have attached for your purusal a transcript from a Help Desk I logged on POINT regarding Budgeted units.

I trust that the good info that Dieter gave and this transcript will provide you with some further direction.

Andy

POINT Transcript:-

Of note I never did get the missing bit from them.



Available Worknotes

**** Entered By: OCPCust @ 2007-06-28 18:01 ****
I would like to have explained the reasons behind the naming of the ’Budgeted Units’ data within P5.
I’m somewhat confused that there is a field called budgeted units that can change and not be reflected in the baseline.

In all my years the Budget was the baseline as described in AS4817-2003, "The Budget is used for performance measurement and generally remains static unless there is a variation in scope"

Could you please clarify this for me?

Thanks
Andy


**** Entered By: COLIN @ 2007-07-04 04:09 ****
Response:

Hello Andrew,

Many thanks for contacting Primavera Customer support. Your incident id for this issue is 11627212. With regards to your question, I understand the AS4817-2003 is an Australian Standard for Earned Value Performance management. I am not at all familiar with this standard but it is fair to say that though we do not code to one particular standard as there are a few in the industry (Prince 2, IEEE, ISO etc) we nonetheless follow PMBOK which is generally accepted as the industry standard World Wide (see attachment of PMBOK Guide and also www.pmi.org). Budgets are defined therein as and thus not refer to baseline. Hence you can have tied in values like Budget at completion, Budgeted cost of Work performed (EV) budgeted cost of work scheduled (PV) etc. The system will use some of the data from the baseline in calculating Earned value for example but this is not to say the baseline is the same as the budget.

I hope you find this to be of use. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I have in anyway misunderstood your questions or if I can be of further assistance.

Regards,
Colin


**** Entered By: OCPCust @ 2007-07-11 18:03 ****
Sorry Colin, but that made no sense at all.

How am I meant to measure performance on my projects if people refer to the budget as the budget when in fact this figure is not fixed to the original scope or estimates, as that is what a baseline does.

Could you please clarify how the product calculates EV, SPI, CPI, BAC, VAC, EAC with respect to the data it uses as a baseline. Does it also matter which baseline is assigned with respect to the calculation of these figures?

Also is there some text missing from you original reply as it seems you were about to describe the PMBOK explanation of budget that Primavera has based their program on but it seemed to skip with a double space?

All I’m interested in is understanding how the tool works, as the training I have received off Primavera here in Australia was very very very basic, and left a whole lot to be desired.

Thanks
Andy


**** Entered By: COLIN @ 2007-07-12 09:55 ****
Hello Andy,

Let me try again and I hope I can make sense this time.

1. With regards to performance once you start updating your schedule with your progress, you can measure your performance against planned i.e by comparing planned against current. Planned is your baseline project and current is your current project that you update. You will find detailed examples of this in the Primavera Reference manual under the section "Updating and managing the Schedule".

2. Please refer to solutions prim33569 and prim16143 in the Knowledgebase for how these values are calculated. There are other solutions that I am sure you will find useful therein too. On the second part of your question, the answer is yes, it matters which Baseline is assigned for when you calculate these figures especially with EV.

3. I apologies if you missed anything. Looking at the log I am not sure exactly so I have reproduced my entire response here:
Many thanks for contacting Primavera Customer support. Your incident id for this issue is 11627212. With regards to your question, I understand the AS4817-2003 is an Australian Standard for Earned Value Performance management. I am not at all familiar with this standard but it is fair to say that though we do not code to one particular standard as there are a few in the industry (Prince 2, IEEE, ISO etc) we nonetheless follow PMBOK which is generally accepted as the industry standard World Wide (see attachment of PMBOK Guide and also www.pmi.org). Budgets are defined therein as and thus not refer to baseline. Hence you can have tied in values like Budget at completion, Budgeted cost of Work performed (EV) budgeted cost of work scheduled (PV) etc. The system will use some of the data from the baseline in calculating Earned value for example but this is not to say the baseline is the same as the budget..."

I am also sending in addition, the PMBOK standard doc. I alluded to.

Regards,

Colin

Hi Andy, hi Praju
There is a finance-budget in Primavera, which remains fix unless you’ll change it intentionally:
- per project, per wbs - not time related, just for complete duration of wbs or project.
- modifications are logged with reason, date, ...
- time related budget: the spending plan - but limited to 48 months, no trace of modifications
--> At any time you are able to check if - the forecasted - budget at completion ("At completion Total Cost") from the activities matches with your budget from the wbs which is according to AS... I assume.
May be this wasn’t the intention of the programmers, but it works.
Regards
Dieter

Praju,

I can think of 3 possible reasons why your costs are not calculated and there may be others:

1. Go to your resource and click the tab details. Is auto compute actuals ticked?
2. In the same place. Is calculate costs from units ticked?
3. You may have 2 ticked but it’s possible to remove this calculation for each activity. So go activitie and resource pane. Then add column to include "costs unit linked" which is under the costs table. This needs to be ticked too.

I hope this helps,

Mark

Mark

Thanks a ton..

It worked.......

Thanks Dieter Wambach and Andy tooo

Thanks Mark! Sorry Praju!
I forgot this parameter.
Regards
Dieter