Risk of having multiple users for a single project

My only real experience of this is with P6 and just a little with P3 in the '90s.

P6 is a database.  When introduced its USP was that all of the activities were in a single database table, which had a field "Project" that told you which project the activity is in.  In this environment I want to break the "Contract" into multiple projects, because you can open any number of projects together and schedule them as one.

This is WAY better than a giant single schedule, where one planner is trying to make sense of electrical comissioning, another mechanical installation etc. 

I do not know what software you are using, but I would be very keen NOT to merge the projects, if I have an easy way to schedule them together. All sorts of advantages the first few I can think of are:

• How many float paths, one per project or one for the whole contract - you can have both at the same time
• Different security profiles for each project (i.e. the "design" owners can see "installation" but not change it)
• A better understanding of interface relationships
• Much easier to cut and paste whole projects. Want to test a new installation schedule? Cut and paste a whole new project into the portfolio.

One planner, one project is great. One contract is almost aways a lot of projects. 

Thanks David,

I am using P6 software. My biggest concern is data or update loss. If we merge all of the schedules into a gient single schedule, it means that 10 planners should concurently work on one schedule from different locations with different primavera server performance. I read somewhere that F5 functionality for higher version of primavera is not that reliable. Isnt it possible that by hitting F9 by one planner, the other planner looses his update.

Ellie,

The data in P6 is safe.  I have lots of criticisms of the applicaton's functionality, but none about the underlying data integrity.

BUT P6's greatest strength is the multi-project structure you can generate to fulfil a single "real-world" project. In that world there may well be a one planner/one project relatonship.

There are no risks in what you are about to do BUT you lose some of the opportunities that a multi-project portfolio offers.

For example, growth.  We all try and measure growth and account for its impact. So in P6 we should put all growth/variation activities in a seperate project.  All we have to do to create relationships with the base scope is open all the projects.

BUT if we are clever in our use of the "Ignore Relationships to and from other Projects"  tick-box in the Scheduling Options dialogue we are only THREE (count 'em) Keystrokes away from demonstrating the impact of growth in the schedule.