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Primavera Project Planner - P3

Large Program / Multiple Schedules

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Ben WaltersMember for 22 years
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I’ve been tasked with creating a master schedule for a $1B+ (US) project where all engineers and contractors will be required to submit schedules in Suretrak/P3 formats on a monthly basis. Our intent is to be able to receive updates on a monthly(+/-) basis and determine the project’s status without re-keying any of the information.

What is the best way to organize this? Early on, I was supplied with Suretrak and created a folder structure similar to the following:

C:Master
C:MasterRD "Phase 1 Road Design"
C:MasterRC "Phase 1 Road Construction"
C:MasterWD "Phase 1 Site Design"
C:MasterWC "Phase 1 Site Construction"

This appeared to work for awhile using Suretrak’s project groups, but once in a rush I did File | Save as and I believe that basically copied the schedules to the main folder.

Recently I was upgraded to P3 3.1 which I used several years ago, but I’ve never worked with groups or on such a project, I’ve always "traded" the schedule back and forth with either the engineer, contractor or client on a pre-determined basis.

Is it better to try and seperate the projects or just dump in one folder? We’ll have 10 to 15 schedules to update monthly at our peak and maybe 80 total during the course of the 15-20 year program.

Thanks in advance for your advice/prayers.

Ben
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  1. 0
    Steven Oliver ·
    #1
    You could try the check-out/check-in facility. Whereby you can temporarily extract a sub-project, send it away for updating and reattach when you get it back, and still retain the logical links between sub-projects.

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  2. 0
    Ben Walters ·
    #2
    That’s what I’m currently doing and everything works fine with 3 projects, I just want to ensure this schedule is "future proofed" where over the course of 10-15 years and 40 more schedules, this thing doesn’t blow up or have to go in the trash bin and completely redone due to a decision I’m making today.

    Right now I’m populating the master schedule by creating all the sub-projects (level 1 schedules) to test a few questions of mine, particularly on dependancies and progressing.
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  3. 0
    Steven Oliver ·
    #3
    Just need to maintain the discipline.

    However I am reminded that using this method there was one of the P3 files (possibly stw) appeared to enlarge with each successive re-attachment.

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  4. 0
    Ronald Winter ·
    #4
    You cad ’cure’ your file-growing problem by running the utility included with P3 called, PFXW.EXE. This program repairs broken files and also compresses them. Run this utility as often as you like. The help screen in the program will tell you more about it.

    Good luck!
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  5. 0
    Zq qz ·
    #5
    This is a very interesting post and I’m so interested knowing about this thats why I made this post to keep me alarm everytime.
    More Power
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  6. 0
    Kevin Button ·
    #6
    This might be a little off topic, but when you say

    "I just want to ensure this schedule is "future proofed" where over the course of 10-15 years..."

    you may need to keep in mind the hardware you are using. P3 is 16 bit software and as I understand it will not work with 64 bit processors. In a few years when 64 bit processors become the norm you might run into some trouble if somebody wants to upgrade your server to the latest and greatest.

    Suretrak on the other hand is 32 bit software and would be OK with a 64 bit processor.

    Good luck.
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  7. 0
    Dayanidhi Dhandapany ·
    #7
    Dear Kevin,

    Could you please tell me why 16 bit applications can’t run on 64 bit processor, while 32 bit can?.

    Thanks in advance,

    Regards

    Daya
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  8. 0
    Kevin Button ·
    #8
    Unfortunately I don’t know enough about computers to know why 16 Bit applications might be a problem with 64 bit processors. However there is info at http://www.devx.com/amd/Article/20342 which amongst other stuff says that "You can’t run applications that use a 16-bit installer."

    Other info is available at
    http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/16-bit%20application

    http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/64-bit

    Was also talking briefly to somebody who has just returned from the User Conference in New Orleans, and Primavera apparently have said that P3 will not be supported on 64 bit operating systems when they are released.

    Hopefully somebody else might be able to shine some more light on this. I will post more info if I find it.
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  9. 0
    Rafael Davila ·
    #9
    For a 15 year program, 1B$, you should look elsewere, not Primavera.
    Consider ARTEMIS:
    *on the market longer than P3 probably over 20 years, Artemis is an established Enterprise Software, just in case you need a huge resource pool by named resources, to complicate things.
    *more powerfull than P3 - I understand with more advanced functions, including Monte Carlo, time-cost trade-off, true job costing, and others.
    *Primavera Contractor is limited to 750 activities, you run the risk of running short with it. It is not a substitute to Suretrak. Is not an established product.
    *P3e/c is no good, dare you to try it before making your mind. I consider it still a Beta Test you pay for. For over two years we have been running P3 and P3e side by side, P3 is a good product, P3e is not.
    *we will continue using P3 until not supported by the windows operating system. If by then P3e is no longer a Beta Product and the 750 activities limit on Primavera Cotractor is raised to Suretrak limit then we might consider P3e an option if Primavera P3e is still on the market.
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  10. 0
    Paul Maddocks ·
    #10
    Dayanidhi Dhandapany
    You may find the following thread interesting as it identifies all of the features that will not be supported by 64 bit Win XP. (DOS is history)
    http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prka_fea_ejfy.asp

    Some quite suprising features will not be supported. Looks like all work and no play to me.
    Hope you find it of interest

    Paul
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  11. 0
    Dayanidhi Dhandapany ·
    #11
    Dear Kevin/Paul,

    Thanks for sharing your information.

    Regards

    Daya
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  12. 0
    Ben Walters ·
    #12
    Shouldn’t Primavera have a better equivalent to 3.1 by the time 64bit processors are the norm? If we can’t transfer a schedule in 3.1 to whatever version they’re up to then, we’d at least be able to export all the data and import to the new version. The real work would be rebuilding the layouts, filters, etc... such as the transfer between Suretrak and P3.

    Thanks a ton for everyone’s thoughts and insight on this matter. At the moment I’m working on some PM and scheduling issues for another part of this project, but I should be back to this issue again tomorrow. I’m building "mini" versions of all the schedules, then roleplaying all the contractors & designers using Suretrak, P3 and hopefully a newer version of P3, such as e or e&c if some of my buddies would return emails. I hope to confirm that all the schedules can be checked in/out with all these different versions, and if not, how they can be updated by other members of the team.
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