Equipment Relocation Schedule

how to create a level 4 WBS?

An example below, but discuss with the project team to see what wbs will be most useful to them

Level 1: Lab Equipment Relocation

Level 2: Department

Level 3: equipment/chemical/consumable/office ware/ raw material

Level 4: Standard steps (Activities)

how to create the logic? what's the relationship among different equipment?(is there any?)

Yes there will be, but we can't tell you what these are with the information given. Some sources of relationships would be, I imagine:

1) Ease of relocation / installation (i.e. if equipment A is to be positioned just in front of equipment B, then B should be relocated before A.

2) Client requirements. -Is the existing lab going to be shutdown all at one time, or in a sequence? Does the client want/need to transfer certain equipment at a certain time? Do certain chemicals or raw materials need to be stored in controlled conditions which are provided by certain equipment which is also being relocated?

3) Safety concerns -Is any of the equipment to be relocated assoicated with safety (eg eye-bath, emergency shower)? If so, they might need to be in place before certain hazardous chemicals / materials are moved in, or they may need to stay in the existing lab until after the hazardous chemicals are removed.

4) Resource / space limitations. You will be limited as to how much you can relocate at any one time by how much labour / transport / space is available. You will need to model this using links or resource levelling.

how to get the resource(the manhour needed)?

Whoever developed the estimated relocation periods will have done so with a particular amount of resources in mind -consult with them.

Alternatively there is presumably a budget for this job, which should include a labour estimate. You may be able to use this to estimate the manhours for each activity.

Good luck!

Justin,

Seems like you have the activities breakdown as well as basic logic assuming all construction pre-requisites such as plumbing, electrical, gas and others are in place. You might add an activity for each responsible manager making sure pre-requisites are there prior to dismantling.

For each equipment you got a subnet of activities all in tandem:

dismantle ==> ship ==> install ==> commissioning ==> run

• From the supplied tabular schedule you can estimate the duration of each activity.
• It might be that commissioning is a single activity common to all or, a few common to some groups of equipment or responsible people. Start assuming one per equipment and then consolidate if needed.
• The dismantle activity start date can be set using a date constraint or let free using the sequential order to set activity priorities as for the resource leveling schedule them in similar sequence as per original plan.
• I would not create false links to keep the sequence let the resource leveling do its job. At the beginning there would be no links between different equipment activities (subnet) and would add only those that are needed after discussing with the responsible people.
• I would start with very basic resources each representing a crew instead of using skills and named resources, a single crew per responsible people. If latter on it comes out one crew is not enough then adjust the available quantities of each crew. In any case after the initial resource loading and leveling I would discuss the resource availability with the responsible people to fine tune the plan.
• Use of partial workloads (hours per day if P6, % if Spider Project) shall keep in control how many pieces of equipment a crew can handle at a given time. Avoid using artificial unflexible links.
• Use of Dummy resources can be used to control how many crews can work simultaneously on any given area. Avoid using artificial unflexible links.

After you have an initial schedule then you can have a constructive meeting. Starting with nothing on a first meeting would be a waste. Of course some informal interaction prior to the meeting shall be considered. If you involve the people without making it a burden they will cooperate and embrace the schedule.

Usually the difficult thing is to get the wheel moving, after it start rolling you will see most of is is common sense you got to compile from the people who know best and that have some bits of information still missing. Essentially they will tell you, your added value is on organizing their input into a flexible model that can account for changes as things happen.

Good Luck,

Rafael

You can control how many activities can work on any given area by using one unit of a dummy resource specific for each area. The available quantity shall equal the number of activities that can be worked at the same time on a given area.

If you want to control certain activity to work on an area separate from any other then assign the maximum units to the dummy resource. An example can be epoxy painting on an enclosed area where only painters using respiratory devices shall work with no other activities being performed on the area at the same time.

You can control on how many activities a resource can work on a given day by assigning the resource a workload that will allow for it. If a resource can work 8 hours a day it can be assigned 4 hours to Activity A, 2 hours to Activity B, 1 hour to Activities C and D. Under such assignment it will be able to work on the same day at all four activities. Use of hammocks or level of effort activities gives you no control at all.

Note that activity priorities are keeping the desired sequence on the order of execution of unlinked activities. Higher priority activities that can be worked at the same time will be scheduled first.

You can combine both for a more restrained allocation, not uncommon on real world schedules. Avoid using links to substitute resource availability logic, they are different issues that can be handled correctly if you use the correct mathematical model.

If you substitute resource leveling with fixed links the model will not be able to respond correctly to changing conditions as the schedule moves. You will have to continuously delete these links and create new ones. The same happens when you force priorities using artificial links.

Although these are real needs, very frequent in real life, their modeling is not so obvious, there is where the scheduler is expected to come to the rescue and provide a model that is as flexible and real as the actual conditions. Shall never be more restrictive, is misleading and not efficient. There is no way you can follow the logic when using hundreds of artificial links that have no place in a good model.

take the feedback of your boss/(people who require such relocation) regarding the priority of movement.