Recording progress on the schedule

Depends on how you have compiled your schedule, if these activities are of sufficient importance, it may be a good idea to seperate them out as individual activities.

Thanks for the reply.
Suppose an activity involves 1000 m of pipeline laying. On the data date of schedule update 600 m of this activity has been completed ( 400 m has been checked and approved by the Engineer/client and further 200 m has been completed but still to be inspected and approved by the client).What progress can be updated on the schedule ,is it 40 % (Approved work) or 60 % (Work executed).

It depends on the schedule purpose. If you use the schedule for resource allocation then you shall definitely record of 600m already done. If you use the schedule to record contract execution you can record 400m as confirmed data.
Even better to have both if you will add an activity Approval that follows pipeline laying (start-start and finish-finish links). In this case you will have both types of information - what was actually done and what work was approved.

If we record only 400m (The Approved work)as progress for recording contract progress.Suppose the activity duration is 10 days .When we record 40 % progress ,the remaining duration will be 6 days.But the actual remaining duration required is only 4 days,so the schedule will show an unrealistic delay of 2 days as of data date.What is the general practice??

Usually we record both - an approval is a separate schedule activity. If you will record only approved work then you will know from the very beginning that your schedule actual information reflects only approved work and remaining schedule shows the remaining work that needs to be approved - approval schedule that may differ from execution schedule.
I suggest to create approval activities.

As for the progress value I would imagine that you have a progress procedure that details how the progress shall be measured. The best would be that you detail the phases: laying, checking.... affect a weight on each activity (based on manhours generally but not always...), then calculate the overall progress, in this case you’ll get a value somewhere between 40% and 60% closer to 60 because most likely the laying takes more time than the checking.

As for the remaining duration there are two options either you feel confident that your progress as calculated above is linear (it reflects that 60% of checking and 40% remain to be done) in this case the calculated RD should be OK.
the second option is to force the RD to Od ratio to be different from the progress. This is justified when your progress is not linear with the duration. It is also much easier to manage...

Is it clear? this is my second post on this forum so please bear it with me if it’s unclear

Hi, Kumar.

The suggestions made by Vlad and Renaud are Ok. However, since you are already in the updating stage and baseline activities were already made, it would be an additional effort for you to fix the schedule and create additional activities --- and it would be more painful if you’re activities runs into thousands.

So, maybe the best thing to do right now is just ask your Control Manager or PM whether to base your progress on Actual Work Approved or Actual Work Completed. Or maybe refer to that Progress procedure as mentioned by Renaud. After all, communication and coordination is the key to effective planning and control.

Regards,
Sen

What is the purpose to recording the progress, 1st to calculate progress payment, 2nd or just to have a forecast of the end date( or to coordinate between other trade/contract)?

for the 1st, you do not need to record it in your schedule

for the 2nd, you’d better use the actual finished rather than the approved (Renaud’s method is a good choice)

Thanks for the reply
One more question.
Is it mandatory to use the option of linking the remaining duration to percentage completion.On which situations this option has to be followed.

If progress is not linear with durations, how it can be fixed in P3. Sorry if I am asking a very basic question.

Kumar,
if it is mandatory to keep the link between % and RD then you need to evaluate what’s the more imporant information: the accurate completion forecast or the accurate progress reporting then you will decide accordingly.

Ruby,
Either it is linear, and you keep the link or it isn’t and you can unlink them, simple.

Thanks,Renaud.

We can set the autocost rules for the entire project: link or unlink progress with remaining durations. But if some activities are progressing in a linear fashion and others not, can we fix different autocost rules for different activities.

Ruby

Ruby

P3e can but not P3.

Second, one more options is to use weighted steps in P3e if you are upgraded to P3e. It is a excellent options in situation like this. You can define the steps with weight then the activity will be calculated in accordance with the rule.

ie
1st Fix installed 10%
2nd Fix installed 20%
3rd Fix installed 30%
Tested 20%
Certified 20%
Total 100%

if the total quantity is 1000m
and
1st fix 1000m = 10%
2nd fix 900m = 18%
3rd fix 800m = 24%
Tested 600m = 12%
Certified 400m = 8%
Total = 72% completed

All these is automatically calculated

In regards to remaining duration. IMHO all remaining duration should be updated from actual accountable managers.

Ie site manager to update site activity RD
Design Manager to update design activity RD
T&C Manager to update T&C activity RD

Then it is becomes their schedule not your schedule. My experience teachs me that it is better you have a shared schedule rather than my schedule.

HTH

Alex

When updating Schedule which option you’re using Retained logic or Progress override and Why?

Refer to Retained Logic & Progress Override.