Complexity of Primavera Schedules

Mark
The size of a plan or schedule depends on the needs of the project (complexity, risk, time frame,...) and on the reporting requirements. It has to serve to the project. So you’ll have to answer by yourself.
AD 1) You’ll have to guide/support a new scheduler; how much, will depend on the scheduler (education, experience, own will to face challenges) and the complexity of the project.
AD 2) Yes
AD 3) See the first sentence. Auto compute actuals for my opinion is dangerous; in 31 years I’ve never seen a project being processed exactly according to plan. It may serve for special resources or activities. You can export/import to Excel for resource assignments as well.
Dieter

Hi Dieter,

Thanks very much for you comments.
Would you be willing to take a rough guess as to how long a schedule of the size & complexity that I previously mentioned would take to update? If it’s definitely too much for a beginner, I need to be speaking with my boss to arrange for him to recruit extra resources.

I also have one other issue that you may be able to help me with?
I tested the .XLS import & was able to trigger an actual start (Cheers) but when I try to input hours into the actual this period column, it doesn’t import. I can get hours to come into the actual labour units column, but once the project is on the go, this field will already have the sum of the total actual units calculated in it.
My understanding of how this import should work is that I should be able to import actual this period labour units which then add to the prior period actuals. I should then be able to store period performance to clear out the actual this period labour units & enable the database to be ready for the next period update
Could you please advise if this assumption is correct & if so... Do you have any ideas as to what I may be going wrong?
P.S. I have checked the link actual & actual this period checkbox in the project calculation tab

Thanks in advance
Mark

Mark
Beginner: Some time ago we had this situation with a beginner scheduling an even bigger project: she managed and even started two more, but smaller projects. She was new in planning/scheduling but not for the company. She needed very little support, but received a P5 training. Currently a beginner - just from university - plans a project with about 3000 acivities. I’m quite optimistic that she will manage - with my support of course.
It depends from the pm as well. Is he/she aware of scheduling as a management tool and willing to support newcomers? There will be more discussions as with an experienced scheduler. But we all started one day.

In Excel-based co-operation, until now, I only experienced the dates. But in close future I’ll have the same issue as you. Let’s co-operate.
Regards
Dieter