JANUARY 2016

ASTA POWERPROJECT
CREATING BASELINES FOR YOUR PROJECT  
 
Maintaining baselines in your schedule is a best practice, and the tip below outlines the
process of managing and creating baselines in ASTA. You also can use this to create What If
scenarios for your schedule.

Before updating progress on any project, you should create a baseline first. This allows you to
compare your progress to the original plan (baseline).

To create a baseline in Asta, select the Project tab and choose the Baseline Manager
command.

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 CREATING BASELINES FOR YOUR PROJECT  

This dialog box appears:

Select NEW (baseline Wizard appears):

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 CREATING BASELINES FOR YOUR PROJECT  

Enter a name and description, however much needed for future reference. Could be used to
describe included/excluded scope so its clear to others just what it includes. Some examples of
baseline names to get into the habit of using descriptive names could be:

Construction 05/05/2016

Engineering 04/01/2016

Funding Approved 03/01/2016

Engineering incl Change Order #2

Having a baseline that would include the modifications for the change order could pay
dividends if a forensics analysis has to be done post project-description of what was included
in the CO. If a project goes on for 2+ years, having these descriptions can be really helpful to
recall what was done and when.

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 CREATING BASELINES FOR YOUR PROJECT  

Select Next:

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 CREATING BASELINES FOR YOUR PROJECT  

Save the baseline name, saved either to the same location as the current schedule, or to a
network drive for others to access, and to automatically be backed up. Click Next:

Gives you opportunity to select all tasks or specific ones (available when multiple components
of projects exist). Select Next:

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 CREATING BASELINES FOR YOUR PROJECT  

Summarizes all functions thru the baseline creation activity. Finish button will complete the
baseline creation and take you back to the Baseline/What If Manager. After multiple baselines
are created, this screen is the manager which allows assigning of different baselines
depending on the need.

Other functions on this screen:

Merge – Include extra data into the baseline that wasn’t available at the time of the original
creation or data that was left out. Lastly, it could be added scope that came after the baseline
was created.

Delete – Delete the baseline from the list of baselines.

Set as Current – The primary baseline desired to view when baseline utility is active. Only 1
baseline can be set to Current. This baseline is the schedule that is used for comparison and
calculations when comparing plan to actual data.

Revert to – Through the planning process, the scheduler might create a “what-if” scenario to
see how certain work package sequencing may influence start-up. The revert to allows for a
scenario to be adopted as the project plan. At the time of Revert, the user can specify the
options in the table as to what specifically is intended to be reverted.

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 CREATING BASELINES FOR YOUR PROJECT  

Import – Ability to bring in another file from your computer and add to the baseline list. This
could be a previously saved file or maybe a template file from a past project that is similar.

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