P3

A
Handbook

SANJIT BHATTACHARYA
BATCH XIX
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH
PUNE, INDIA
FOR BEGINNERS
_____________________________________________________________
This handbook is a very basic guide for all those who have just started using or are about to
use Primavera Project Planner. Many detailed functions of P3 like Leveling, Smoothening,
Target Projects, Fragnets etc. are not covered or covered very superficially, just to meet the
needs of beginners.

Please note that most of the steps given here may also be found in the P3 help section. But
an attempt has been made to make it easier to understand the concepts and applications by
using the graphic interface windows of P3.

GETTING STARTED

Primavera Project Planner is one of the premier project planning packages. People do
believe that it not as user friendly as many other planning softwares of the same genre but in
the long run P3 has proved to be more consistent, effective and effective.

P3 has got many dummy projects which come complementary along with the installation
files. They are stored by default in the following location

C:\P3WIN\PROJECTS

The user has although a choice to either select the location for one’s own projects or to
simply save them in the above mentioned default folder.

Adding a New Project

The following user interface welcomes you once the P3 icon is double clicked and a new
project is opened from the File tab.
Under the project name any four lettered name can be given. P3 does not accept any name
more than or less than 4 characters. Number/Version can be given as per your convenience
to identify the project later. Project title is something like “Construction of Flyover” or any
other name you want to give to your project. The name of the organisation you working for
generally come in the Company Name option.

Planning units available from the drop-down list are: Hour

Day
Week
Month
You may choose any of the planning units depending up on the level of precision you
require in the project.

Project must finish date should be filled with utmost caution as once defined it shall keep
crunching the project best to fit and get completed within the said date; the resources shall
be allocated accordingly.

Project Group can be added if the new project you are creating is a part of any other big
project viz. Phase I, Phase II, Sector A, Division 4 etc.

Once done with all the above you are ready to actually work on the project.
A comprehensive list of entire shortcut keys to use P3 better is given at the end of the
handbook in annexure.

Project entries

Setting up of CALENDARS

All activities in P3 are assigned to a project calendar which defines when activities can be
performed. Each project has a global calendar and a standard calendar (CALENDAR 1).
The global calendar enables you to specify non-work periods, exceptions to non-work
periods and holidays for the entire project. Calendar 1 is a default calendar to which all the
activities are assigned unless you add other calendars to control scheduling for specific
situations. In a daily project, calendar 1 specifies five days per week, beginning on Monday
(unless you specify a different day when you add the project). For hourly, weekly or monthly
projects, calendar 1 uses continuous worktime. You can change calendar 1 but you cannot
delete it from any project. Calendars can not be modified from a subproject. Changes must
be made at the master-project level.

Adding a Project Calendar

To add a calendar to any project this path needs to be followed:

Data\Calendars

There you need to define the project calendar.

In the base calendars you can define holidays as required. Holidays can be either repetitive or
non-repetitive. They may also be defined in Calendar 1, in such a case they are the global
holidays. Repetitive holidays shall keep on occurring automatically on same day every year.
Some exceptions may also be added in holidays. e.g. if in any particular region it rains heavily
from 2nd of April to 2nd of June. Repetitive holidays may be declared for duration but under
exception you may consider working for last 2 weeks or first two weeks anticipating that
rains may not be there or if at all they are there, the may not hamper the project execution so
much. All such calculations depend solely upon your knowledge of the climatic conditions or
for that matter any other similar factors.

It may be noted that any calendar we make in the project gets a calendar id and that is from
2 only, for the simple reason that the id 1 is given to the default calendar.

You may also change the working days from the base calendar to suit the demands of the
project as well as location of the project (as various countries may have different working
days).
Any calendar except the Calendar 1 may be deleted but care needs to be taken that all
activities assigned to it are reassigned to any other calendar with the Global Change;
otherwise P3 shall by default assign them to the Calendar 1.

Work Break-Down Structure

To start with you need to decide the various activities that come under each other in a
proper sequence. Also we need to decide the various levels of activities that we shall be
having. viz.

For a power plant, maintenance may have the following sub-activities:

 Electrical
 Mechanical
 Civil
 Chemical

So we need to indent the sub-activities under the main activity so as to decide the structure
of the WBS.

If you decide that you shall be having 6 (1 digit) major activities, 12 (2 digits) sub-major
activities, 150 (3 digits) activities under sub-majors and 8 (1 digit) activities under that then
the Structure to be defined has to be like:
1.2.3.1
This is as simple as coding done in factories, assembly lines or any manufacturing unit.

The WBS window can be opened from the following path:

Window\WBS

It is advisable for the beginners that the entire activities be chalked out first and written on
paper and then the entries be made on the interface window.
The interface shall have a button named Structure, which is to be clicked next.
On clicking the Structure tab an interface opens up that demands the structure from the
user.

Here the separators used are dot (.) but you have a choice to also use slash (/) but only one
kind of separator can be used in a project. The maximum levels in P3 are 20.

Next comes the entering of the various codes and their names. As you enter more levels P3
shall automatically indent them accordingly and the WBS shall be finally ready.

The various activities can be later changed from the WBS window, but it is advisable to
make sure of the various activities as per their order at the first stage itself and then enter
them to the WBS table.
Next comes the entering of the various activities and the main data table. The various
activities are entered with their activity IDs. Activity IDs are unique and can never be same
for more than 2 activities.
When we start entering activity IDs, we have to enter only the ID for the first activity and P3
automatically takes the ID for all the other succeeding activities with an increment of 10.
Although it’s a matter of choice for the user to accept the ID automatically generated by P3
or edit the ID manually and generate your own ID, but in such a case the ID of all the
activities need to be changed manually.

Activity ID may contain numbers, alphabets or a combination of both. In case the ID is

purely alphabetical then P3 tends to increment the ID numerically by 10 at the end

e.g. Activity ID AAA

Incremented ID AAA10

The increment may however be entered according to the choice of the user.
For this the following path needs to be followed:

Tools\Options\Activity Inserting…

Change the Increment to the desired level and finally click OK.

Adding a new Column or editing an existing one.

P3 adds each column to the left of the first column. To add a column to the right of the last
column in the activity table, click the row under the item. To insert a column between
existing columns, click the data item you want the new one to precede, then click.

Any of the columns may be deleted by deleted by simply clicking on its name from the
Column Interface as shown above and striking delete key.
Modification of any column however may be done from this interface. For that the
following path needs to be followed:

Format\Column….

Pattern of dates that are desired by the user may also be altered from the Format tab:

Format\Dates….

Be it formatting the font of the various tool bars or altering colours of the various rows and
columns all can be managed from the Format tab.

Activity Codes & Activity IDs

Next step is the assigning of activity codes. This includes naming the various zones or sub-
divisions (if any) in which the project needs to be carried out.

Activity Code is used to:

 Define codes that uniquely identify each activity in a project and group activities in
similar categories.
 Classify activities into specific groups such as responsibility, phase, system or
location.

The Activity ID:

 Enables you to classify activity IDs in ways that are meaningful within your project.
For example, in a project that is a part of a group, the first two characters of the
activity ID are reserved for SUBP (Project ID) code; this enables you to sort and
summarize activities based on these codes.
 Activity IDs can contain upto 10 alphanumeric characters, which can be divided into
a maximum of four codes. Activity ID codes can be used for organizing and filtering
data in the layout and in tabular reports and graphics.

To enter activity codes click on Data tab and then on Activity Codes….
Data\Activity Codes…
All the activity codes have certain values which need to be allocated later under various
activities. The length of the codes specifies the maximum no of characters that can be used
to define the various codes, e.g. under the Code AREA the length is 3 which means that
under AREA code the values can’t be more than three, this can be verified from the Value
table that the longest value assigned under AREA is NSO (a three character value).

Under the Activity ID a code SUBP (Sub-Project) has been defined. Under that 2 values
have been given P1 and P2 for the two phases in which the project shall be carried out. The
order option in all cases just sets priorities for the various codes.
Allocation of Responsibilities

It is first necessary to decide the workforce required for the entire project. For example, in a
construction project you may require a Junior Engineer, a Senior Engineer, a Construction
Manager, a Fabrication expert, a Piping expert and so on. Then these need to be entered into
the database of the project under the RESP code and values need to assigned as per the
length given to each code
e.g. AW for Alice White.
The order of these is again decided on basis of priorities or seniority of the people in the
project.

Then to assign the responsibilities select any activity, preferably in serial order and press F7.

After this window opens go on clicking on every activity in an order and P3 shall
automatically take the value of these activities in the ID box and also show its description.
Here you have to assign only the values on the lowest row. The position of the activity in
WBS shall also be shown in the table automatically provided you have chosen for this option
to be displayed while creating the various activity codes.

Delete Activities

To delete activities from a project select that activity and click Edit tab, then click delete.
You can also click on that activity and click the ‘-’ sign on left top corner in the activity table.

P3 deletes the selected activities without warning the user. It also does not copy the same in
any restorable location. All responsibilities and relationships are deleted from the database.
So be very careful before deleting any activity.

Edit Activities

To edit one activity on the Activity Table:

i. Click on the cell you want to change and press F2
ii. Make changes on the edit bar and click the tick mark or choose the cross mark if you
wish to cancel it.

You cannot edit certain information, such as data calculated by P3. If you select a cell in the
activity table that cannot be edited then the contents of that table shall appear dimmed in the
edit bar.

Finding an Activity

i. Click Edit, Find or press Shift+F5.

ii. All the activities in the current layout are shown in the form of a drop-down list.
Choose the required activity and click OK.
Relationships of the Various Activities.

As all the activities do not start all together in any project and they only follow each other so
it becomes mandatory to assign a proper sequential relationship between all the activities.

Once you have entered all the activities and their sub-activities press F7 to open an interface.
In that window click on any activity and then click ‘Pred’ or ‘Succ’ depending on you want to
enter Predecessor or Successor for the selected activity.

The following Interface opens and then press + and select any desired preceding/
succeeding activity from the drop down list and click OK to finalize the selection. This
selection can later be changed but extreme care needs to taken before making any such
change as it shall effect all linked activities as duration of the entire project shall depend on
the way the various activities are linked to each other.

In these relations it is important to assign the types of relationships as follows:

FF: Finish-to-Finish
FS: Finish-to-Start
SS: Start-to-Start
SF: Start-to-Finish

In the window there is an option called JUMP on right hand top corner. If you select on any
of the linked activity on this window and then click JUMP then P3 shows you the exact
location of the activity as per WBS entry on the Activity table.
All activities may or may not have a buffer time period for their completion. This buffer is
nothing but FLOAT, which can also be assigned to every related activity in the TF column.
Some activities also have a lag which may be shown by the user in the Lag column. This
greatly helps in monitoring of the project.

Linking and Unlinking of Activities.

Use the Link command to quickly assign a finish-to-start relationship to a series of activities.
To link activities follow the following path:
Edit\Link Activities..

This may however be followed only when no links have been established, i.e. on a new
project and not on an existing one.

P3 links the activities with finish-to-start as default relationship.

To unlink the activities or to remove finish-to-start follow the following path:
Edit\Unlink Activities..

Resource Entries

Resources for all the activities need to be defined prior to levelling or final scheduling. This
can be done very easily. To enter resources for every activity the following path needs to be
followed:
Data\Resources

The following interface is opened:

Then the resources are entered as required in the project. For beginners it is advisable to first
jot down the resources on paper and then feed the data to P3. There is a column called
driving in the resources table. This is to determine if the resources are dominant for a
particular activity. P3 gives preference in allocation and levelling to the driving resources.
Base stands for the calendar code that is to be followed for that resource’s allocation. If not
mentioned P3 takes Calendar 1 as the base.

Limits for any resource may be defined in two parameters, Normal & Maximum. At any
given planning unit (hour, day, week etc.) no resource can exceed cumulative allocation
values more than the max value defined in this table.

Through defines the time period through which those limits apply. If for example we need 3
excavators from 1st February to 15th February and 4 excavators from 15th February to 4rth
March then these two time periods may be specified under the through column and
corresponding requirement of the equipment may be given in limits column corresponding
to these time periods.

Price of every resource needs to be defined in the next columns to be able to meet the cost
calculation requirements later on. Price of a particular resource may change over a period
during the project. You may provide several periods and variations in price/unit of resources
under through column in the same manner as done for Limits.

Resource Allocation

To allocate resource to a particular either double click the activity name or press F7 and
select the activity. The select the ‘Res’ tab. Following interface opens:

On clicking the + sign you shall be able to add a resource from the drop down list. The early
start and early finish dates are already specified in this table by default. All you need to enter
is the resource and the required units per day. P3 shall automatically take care of the cost
calculations.

Fragnets

Fragnets are sections of a network that you can use to build projects quickly. You can create
Fragnets using data from your own projects or from sample projects provided by P3. For
example if a Construction Company has three similar flyover projects lined up. They may
create fragnets from one project for activities and/or resources, cost, durations etc. These
fragnets shall help to work faster on the upcoming two projects later on.

Resource Leveling

When you have provided all the activities with resources it is always not necessary that the
resources may be used totally by an activity that has been assigned with those resources.
Vice-versa an activity may require more resources than have been assigned to it. To correct
this mismatch and to ensure proper availability of resources we need to perform leveling of
resources after the allocation.

Leveling Project Groups & Projects

This is to enable the user to evaluate the impact of resource availability across various
projects. This is particularly important when more than one project is a part of a group or
sub-projects of a main project.

To specify priorities for projects within the group follow the follow path:

Data\Activity Codes

The following window opens:

At the top pf the dialog box, choose activity ID and in the codes section select the Project
ID, the field containing the project identifiers from the drop down list.

In the values section, specify an order number to control the ranking of each project group.
After saving the settings by clicking close, choose Tools\Level for initiating the Auto
Leveling process.

In the prioritization section of resource leveling dialog box, specify project ID as the first
prioritization parameter.

REPORTS

The various steps included in generating and preparing reports are as follows:

Adding Specifications for reporting

This is to define the type of report you want. One can also modify the existing report
specifications and add new ones.

The following path needs to be tracked for adding specifications for the report.

Tools\(Type of Reports)\(Sub-Type of Report)

e.g. Tools\Tabular Reports\Schedule

The following window shall be displayed on selecting this path.

Around 21 pre-formatted reports are already populated. You may select any one of them and
run to view the same or you may also select Add button to input specifications to suit your
requirements.
On selecting Add a similar window pops up.

Select the report id and click Add. The following window opens.

You may then add the various specifications as shown on the window and customize the
kind of report you want to use.

A specification may also be deleted. To do this simply select the specification and click on
Delete tab.

For beginners it is advisable not to delete any of the default specifications as they may wish
to refer any of them later.

Never forget to click OK to save any changes as if it is not done then all the effort of adding
it goes waste. Clicking Cancel shall return to the previous window at any time during this
process.

Selecting of Resources and Cost Accounts

The following path needs to be traced in order to select resources and cost accounts;

Tools\Tabular Reports\Resources
In case no resource selection is defined for resources selection then P3 automatically
produces a report for each of the resources. To combine them into one single report we
need to select the cost range.

On following the above stated path the window as stated above opens. Then click Add and
add a code. Then the following window opens:

Click on the profile if column and then choose a criteria from the drop-down list. Then
select a low value and high value resource and cost account.

The cost accounts must use the same justification defined in the cost accounts dictionary
and in activity assignments. If the cost category of cost accounts (the last column) is blank in
the selection, P3 reports on only those specified cost accounts that also have a blank
category position in their activity assignments.

Set Reporting Options

You can select the way your report to be displayed when you select to view or run a report.
This may be done by following these simple steps.

Follow this path:

Tools\Tabular Reports\Options
 The following window shall open;

The various selections and their implications are as follows:

View On Screen Displays the report in the Look program

Output is send to the connected printer and directly reports are
Print Immediately printed.
Reports are saved to a destination selected by the user on the hard
Save to a File disk.
A dialogue box opens in this selection asking the user to select the
Ask when Processing preferred option.
Print Sort/Select
Criteria Prints the sort and selection criteria on the first page of the report.
Specify the number of lines per page of the report for your
Lines Per Page convenience
Center Heading Enter a title to display at the top center of all tabular reports.