Hi, I need some Help. I have the below question from one of the Project Managers.

Any advice in what should I answer to him?? "if we don't use all the hours that are planned in one of the weeks, are these hours easily reusuable? What is the mechanism to use them later? When can we do this can of corrections? Maybe every month you can provide a balance of "unused" hours and then we tell you how we want to reallocate them"

Many thanks for your help. 12 days ago Like CommentFollow Flag More Ahmed Ismail Imbaby , PMOC, Naima MESSAOUDI and 1 other like this 25 comments Jump to most recent comments

Follow Jan Jan van den Berg Hi Ervin Consider the following. When you update your schedule and you notice that you are using less labour units then planned or budgeted, then apply a factor to the remaining labour units and deploy less labour. I do not see why you should consider to pile up resources. Regards Jan 12 days ago Like

Follow Jos Jos Frade Hello ErvinM/H are not abstracts. Thay correspond to labor/trades/etc. planned for specific activities of the project. If the past activities are belonging to a particular project phase that do not repeat for the next week then they cannot be used just like that. In general we can say that your productivity is higher than planned (>1). As a result keep watching this indicator (productivity) and if you have similar activities, you should adjust near planned activities. Keeping the accounting on Baseline/Actual/Forecast you can estimate values at completion and have an idea if you project is going to finalize on/above/lower budget.

Just becasue you did not use all the planned M/H does not mean you can put more people on the next activities (it might not even be phisicaly possible).

BR

JMFrade 12 days ago Like3

Follow Aftab Aftab Khan Dear Ervin-

If you do want to do as you suggest-you have to Re-Plan every time period-not recommended-but if you want to do it->Keep a "Running" Tab in Excel for Manhours Originally Planned->"Unused" Hours for Time Period-->"Re-Planned" Hours for each Activity (these "Re-Planned" Manhours- "To Go" Manhours Only will be the "Estimate to Complete" Manhours in Primavera, and if you have to "Adjust" the Original "Budgeted Quantity" Manhours in Primavera-you can do this as well. To Automate Processes->First Export Required Fields from Primavera to Excel->Then "Adjust" in Excel>and Reimport from Excel to Primavera). These Types of Periodic "Adjustments" to Plan are however not recommended really-as stated by Jan and Jose above. Also, Primavera P6 (all Versions) also has the feature of "Bucket Planning" within the Program->Which you can use very effectively for what you have stated-> And Manhours for "Plan" and "Forecast"/ETC can be "tweaked" by Activity/WBS etc.->To give the desired Results that you need.

Hope this helps.

Best12 days ago Like

Follow Ervin Ervin Corzo Thanks for your help. 11 days ago Like

Follow Rodney Rodney Cameron There is no such thing as unused hours in a project....what you have is a question of production and/or productivity.....Two questions?

Did you install the work that was planned with less hours than planned? If so your production is acceptable and your productivity was better than planned.

Did you install less work than was planned with less hours than was planned? If so your productivity may be within baseline assumptions.

Hours to earn never go away.....meaning budget manhours in the beginning equal budget manhours at the end...what does change is hours to complete and at complete.....thereby creating a variance 11 days ago Like3

Follow Saju Saju Samuel You cannot use a Past time, Once its gone you cannot re use it, Usually a project schedule is fixing between two Mile stones without any extra time,If float is there you have to use that float with in late finish dates. Some time he is talking about introducing additional shift in the program in order to fill the lost productivity. Remember additional shift have cost. Is this Project manager from consultant side? if yes then he is pushing the concept of" reuse time" in order to deny extension related claims. There are reasons for lost time or lost productivity, find out the reasons then mitigate it appropriate way 11 days ago Like

Follow Ervin Ervin Corzo Thank you all for your comments very helpful. I have a new enquire. I have been asked to create an activity in primavera where people in the project can book hours against "Unprodcutive or maluse time, for example going to unnecessary meetings with the client, completing sort of silly request from client". What do you think? Does it sound like a good idea? What name should I give to the activity that the client be ok with that? Many thanks.

11 days ago Like

Follow Ervin Ervin Corzo Thank you all for your comments very helpful. I have a new enquire. I have been asked to create an activity in primavera where people in the project can book hours against "Unprodcutive or maluse time, for example going to unnecessary meetings with the client, completing sort of silly request from client". What do you think? Does it sound like a good idea? What name should I give to the activity that the client be ok with that? Many thanks. 11 days ago Like

Follow Devang Devang Dedhia What's the purpose of recording such time? Do you really want to share that with the client; what are you trying to tell the client? 11 days ago Like

Follow Ervin Ervin Corzo The Client is inviting for so many meetings that are considered a waste of time. So, the company is thinking to have an activity where people in the project could book hours against. 11 days ago Like

Follow Jos Jos Frade That has nothing to do with project planning. I sugget you record such events on some kind of database/spread sheet and later on give them a graphical presentation to highlight whatever objective of the PM.

Besides, Most likely we are speaking about indirect M/H.

BR

JMFrade 11 days ago Like

Follow Rodney Rodney Cameron Ervin, I can think of no better way to have your client start having meetings with the NExt contractor. Further I would assume that most of the people in the meetings would be management therefore indirect labor....that earns nothing anyway....

I strongly caution against this. 11 days ago Like

Follow Devang Devang Dedhia Also keep in mind, that when you add hours/cost to an activity in the schedule, these hours will get counted in any report from P6 unless you take some steps to prevent that from happening. Every time you have any report involving hours, you will have to account for these hours in your analysis/projection, the actual hours could be inflated due to the recorded hours. 10 days ago Like

Follow Anthony Anthony Myers We add a level of effort activity to contain non-productive time. At the start of each shift we conduct a safety meeting and as required by law pay for 2 breaks during the day. This level of effort activity and the work order number associated with it allows us to plan for and book time to this activity so that we can get a better depiction of productivity in each of the other areas the contractor is working. This also allows us to use true time estimate and put the necessary, but not productive time in this bucket. 10 days ago Like

Follow Amr Magdy , Amr Magdy , PMP In clear terms i believe that your PM is asking you how to improve the productivity to catch up with the previous lapse time , In terms of EV you can calculate the "ETC" in terms of remaining duration and then to level the resources "probably add more in the affected or critical activities" to mitigate to the anticipated delays by end of the project . 9 days ago Like

Follow Neetu

Neetu Grewal Those meeting houirs should be captured in you overall project management LOE activity. There should not be a seperate activity to capture such hours. The point of an overall PM LOE activity is to capture meetings, printing, PA work and any other over heads. Someone pls correct me if I am wrong??

Someone did mention above about capturing them into a spreadsheet to present at a later time but one comment to that is do you want to use your time to capture waste of time activites?? 7 days ago Like

Follow Anthony Anthony Myers Neetu

How would you handle contractors coming into and/or leaving the project at different times during execution? 7 days ago Like

Follow Jaco Jaco Stadler What does your contract say ? What Type is it ? Is it Lum Sum Reimbursable Target Cost Etc Are you mesuring PF The biggest Fight you can have what is the real number the easiest is to put the owner in notice and when you go into the meeting get him to sign a timesheet.

It could also became a Big Black Hole.

As far as adding it to the schedule I would recommend that but ensure it align with your cost reports.

Is your contract type ENC 6 days ago Like

Follow Eric Eric Jubert Ervin, what you are asking is if the unused manhours can be used later? The answer is yes, for a given resource, depending on how you look at. Unused budgeted manhours means that the actual is less than the planned, which is a positive manhour variance. As the project progresses, that positive manhour variance may be eaten up by work that overran its planned manhours, taking your project back to a zero variance or to a negative variance (actual more than planned).

I wouldn't use the phrase "reuse" manhours to describe it all though. Unused manhours for one resource type does not mean you can "reuse" them for another resource type. The labor rates and availabilities for each resource are probably different. 6 days ago Like1

Follow Ervin Ervin Corzo Thank you all for your comments. It seems that the PM has abandon the idea of recording this time. Your comments are definittely very good in the sense that may me think of many choices. This is great, thank you all. 4 days ago Like

Follow Patrick Patrick O'Connell, PMP Ervin, your needs are not too unique (not the maluse issue). In essence you are asking for a closeout report during the life of the project. In P6 think about using the resource assignments view. You have budget, actual, etc. You can also create a udf and then run a global change to populate it with Budget minus Actual hours. As you get creative you can than report "exception" hours so that you still have your project total Budget and can compare it against the new UDF. With a layout, you have totals at the project level and also detailed activity - resource assignments. This way you can determine when "unused" hours are beneficial, noise, etc.

You could also do this at the activity level in a similar manner 4 days ago Like

Follow VED PRAKASH VED PRAKASH -PRIMAVERA /MS PROJECT Ervin, Take an example. You had to carry out a work today in 8 hrs. You finished in 6 hrs. Then in balance 2 hrs you can do some other work today itself, but these 2 hrs can't be stored for tomorrow. Time is not material ,which can be stored. Tell your Project Manager. 3 days ago Like

Follow Doug Doug Galt - AScT, AACE Total project budget need to be outlined and progressed. Create an LOE activity and call it non deliverable / task. This will cover meetings, monthly progress reporting, coordination, RFI's. 2 days ago Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate

Follow WILLIAM WILLIAM WEDDENDORF I am surprised that folks here are not anxious to account for client-driven time delays! We need to account for "scope creep." Let's say the client decides to require interminable weekly meetings of project or even craft management to discuss, say, safety or some other well-meaning initiative that were not specified in their bid proposal. With respect to "unused" budgeted hours, in a fixed-price job, those are called profit due to superb performance. However, in all projects, there are tasks which require more hours than budgeted and those are called "learning opportunities" for the next bid. In time-and-materials work, normal meetings would be included as a multiplier on standard labor rates. As the above commenter has done, project management time can also be captured in a LOE task. 1 day ago Like

Follow ruba ruba abdl hadi hi Ervin, when u doing the updating schedule for every month or week, you have to put the % complete for each activity, so if the labors or any causes make the project late, u don't have to calculate the hours, the % complete will calculate the using of machine and other resources