P6 - Resource Loading (Budgeted Units)

Steve
You plan with 10 hours a day; do you really intend to plan with overtime on top? While a project is in progress overdue hours happen - again on top? For my experience, projects with planned overdue hours are about to fail.
In P6 you can’t plan with overdue hours. But you can enter actual overdue hours. Costs for those units will be calculated by price*hours*ot_factor. You can enter them either using time-sheets or directly for the resource assignments.
Regards
Dieter

Project mandate is that all contractors will be required to work 10hrs/day. Therefore I will have to show 8hrs/day reg. time and 2 hrs/day OT. I thought about a blended rate (Rate per Trade = Total Trade/(Reg+OT) - not sure if that would work when inputing actuals?

To anwser your question: Yes there will be times when these contractors will work 14,15,16 hrs days (all at the OT rate.

Question about tracking activities within the schedule:

There are many line items (activities) within the schedule. I am currently resource loading every activity for the purpose of creating a baseline schedule. These activities will roll up (hrs and cost for resources) to the WBS Summary. Is it possible to track (feed) actuals into the WBS Summary rather than into each activity, which would be laborus for both myself and the contractor. Your experienced thoughts/comments would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Steve
10h/day is quite normal for construction site, 14 hours maybe possible for a short period, e.g. a turnaround. Longer periods: no, in my opinion - human beings, no robots.
I agree to your idea to collect manhours on wbs-summaries (or levels of effort). This will make live easier for reporting progress and reports from construction site will be more reliable. You’ll just add the columns Actual Labour Units and Actual Overtime Labour Units to your resource assignments. For the actual costs P6 will calculate normal hours with the normal rate assigned to this activity and equivalent for the overdue hours. So you’ll better do with the real rate and overdue factor plus additional costs (camp, tools, etc.). Accuracy will satisy project planning.
Planning: A blended rate would destroy your calculation of actual costs. For planning purpose maybe the normal rate for all planned hours plus an extra (expenses) will work. OR you’ll assign the resources a second time with different rates.
Alternatively: You’ll mix planning and accounting issues. All real cost you’ll (probably) find in project accounting.
My humble opinion
Dieter

yeah i guess so. The productivity will become worst since you spend more hours but less progress (people not like a robot to have consistent energy).what kind of tools are you working for now?P3 or P6 .... maybe I can show u something useful about resource levelling.I’ve been done this when I was at offshore last time and it works perfectly.... pls get my email...aizam.zakaria@sbmoffshore.com