Interproject Releationships

Elizabeth,

If you set up your programme as a number of sub projects you can then check-out the contractors programmes to send to them to update. When they return their prx you can check it back in with the links in place. There is the added bonus that any inter-project links will appear as constraints to them so they won’t change activities constrained by another contactor.

Hope this helps.

Paul

Hello Elizabeth,

Interproject is not the best way to implement the integrating Schedule. I agree with Paul for the Sub-Projects being created with all different projects interlink. My experience for the interproject was bad especially when you are about analysing the TF or critical path because their projects interlinks are not shown in Pred/Succ tables. It is like a virtual links that you have to look at it in Interproject File which might be a lot of fun from what you are working on.
The problem you should encounterred from 5 master schedules is about the limitation of the activity coding in P3 such 64 Characters in 1 Project Group. You might need to think about it before exploit the coding resources.

Hope that your expected automated way will help that much work.

Nice day,
Praves

Elizabeth,

>>>If you set up your programme as a number of sub >>>projects you can then check-out the contractors >>>programmes to send to them to update. When they return >>>their prx you can check it back in with the links in >>>place.


Paul, in your experience has this worked for you? I can see it could work mechanically, but politically we are nervous that the contractor will claim we changed their schedule in some way when we check it out of our Master Project Schedule. Please advise.

Elizabeth,

yes this does work but you need to make sure the contractors understand how you are working. The contractors programme will be the responsibility of the contractor and there should be very few changes to it made by yourself.

The only diferences they should see would be delays caused by other linked sub projects. Assuming the logic is correct you should be making them aware of these delays anyway, no activities should ever be brought forward by yourself as the contractor should have their project coded to work as a stand alone.

Paul

You said that the prx file I send back to the contractor will containt inter-project links that appear as constraints and that the contractor cannot change activities constrained in this way.

Could you provide detail on what you mean. Can the contractor add update information, change remaining durations, possibly change other predecessors/successors to these activities? Will the activity appear greyed out so they can’t modify it at all? Please elaborate...

Thank you in advance for your answer!

The only change to their programme will be the addition of constraints preventing them from making an activity start earlier than a predecessor from another programme finishes (lags accepted). The contractor will still be able to change the logic within their programme, change durations etc.

It might be helpful to create a play group with a couple of example projects and have a play, let me know of any problems and I’ll help where I can.

Paul

elizabeth and all,

just to share, not sure if this is good or bad... advice/comments much appreciated

if i were u, i would have my overall schedule (with all activities of the 5 "subprojects", with or without using the subproject setup)

separately, i also hv a copy of each project (subproject) as standalone. This will be updated by them and reurned to me in prx. I will then export the progress data to WK1 and import them into my overall schedule.

not labour intensive. just a click of a few buttons.

exporting the prev month data of a subproj and comparing it with those from current month’s also allow me to check it the subcontractor makes any changes to their schedule.

Eugene,

Your suggestion seems sensible although using the sub project method removes the need to transfer from a stand alone into the main programme; thus reducing the possiblity of errors. If you wish to export and compare as WK1 you can do so before and after cheking in the contractors programmes.

Paul

Elizabeth

When I was involved in the CLK airport project, where it have around 50 main contractors that have their own program. In order to product a master schedule that have all the interproject relationship, it is near impossible to achieve. Therefore the engineer uses the below method and it is very useful

1. Have your contractor identifies all the interface requirement(Access Points, Structure completion points, availiable of temp power...)
2. Create a table that identify all these points and validate it
3. Create a interface schedule which only have these milestone.
4. Update and distribute these milestone monthly whereby the contract need to update prior to their submission of the overall schedule update
5. You review the individual schedule and see any interface points is critical

By doing the above,
1. The contractor is responsbile to identify all their interface points, so if they were delay by activity outside of what they identify, then are responsible for their error
2. Everyone know all the key interface point to plan their works
3. You dont need to maintain a master schedule with all these link you have to create

Good Luck

Alex

Alex,

Good idea.

Does this mean you didn’t produce an integrated programme, only a milestone programme. If so, what checks if any did you perform on the contractors programme?

Paul

Paul

What it mean is you will have 2 program
1 master program where all the contractor program are combined
2 interface milestone program where all the interface milestone is listed and updated monthly

The method of validate the interface point is easy, you will have the same milestone between program 1 and 2, and if you filter out these milestone and find any different then it means that the contractor did not update the schedule accordingly (easy)

Good Luck

Alex