Does Your Project Schedule Have Too Much Detail?

hi everyone thanks for coming and join us on a splint Academy I've got a special guest who's going to join us and answer your question today on a splint Academy so today's question is this how big should my primavera p6 schedule be how big is in how many activities so this is a question I get a lot and it's also a problem that I see a lot of we often see massive schedules like 30,000 activities and there's a major problem with those schedules when they're so big they're incredibly difficult to manage and update so I'm gonna invite dr. Sally Mubarak to come in in just a second and help you figure out how big and how much detail you should put in your schedule Sally come on in alright thank you Mike that was a good question and I get that question as well in fact I remember years ago I was teaching this seminar in in a different country and the chief scheduler came to me and asked me I want you to look at my schedule and tell me if it is a good schedule the problem was that that schedule was for hydroelectric dam that involves laughs elements that I wasn't technically capable of understanding and I wanted to give him a general answer that satisfies him now if you asked this question probably 40 years ago I would have my answer would have been different because at that time we didn't have computers and people did everything by a pencil and paper so there was a high pressure on us not to expand those schedules be beyond certain maybe you know a hundred hundred and fifty because manually it would be impossible now we have computers and people went probably to the other extreme to dividing the project into as you said 30,000 50,000 some people mentioned to me of a project with a hundred thousand activities the problem is the management of this project of this size this details I want to give you an example here if I have a building that's 20 floors and we can see here this is just a sketch we have 24 columns and those columns go all the way from the foundation to the roof so I want to look at only only the concrete items all right so how many activities I should have in this and 20 floor is kind of average project these days not the largest we have buildings that are even hundred floors or so and we have even other types of like a stadium and and other structures that are very complicated in this let's start with the I'm going to use I'm going to be using the CSI massive format so at level to which we can say that we have only one activity one concrete activity for the entire building which is FRP FRP stands for formwork rebar and placement of concrete FRP concrete work for building and that's one activity for the entire building of course that's not practical so we say okay let's go to the next level level three and we're going to divide it by floor we have 20 floors so that one activity is going to be 20 activities and each one will be called FRP concrete work , 3rd floor 4th floor 5th floor and so on and now we have 20 activities but we say that's not enough because we are mixing apples and oranges and we have 6 different concrete elements not including of course foundation but in on every floor we have six types of at least six it could be suspended slabs of different types let's say suspended slabs beams columns sheer walls stairs elevated elevator shafts and and then those 20 activities will be multiplied by 6 to indicate the type of concrete elements so now we have 120 activities and each one will say FRP concrete columns third floor shear walls fifth floor and so on but you may say that that's not enough let's break it down by the type of work don't say FRP form work is an activity rebar is an activity placement is an activity which is true so we have to multiply that 300 or have 120 by 3 and we get 360 activities to me that is a good point to stop but what if somebody said no no I want each column and each beam to have its own activity well in this case we have twenty four columns multiplied by 360 so we have eight thousand six hundred and forty activities and that's only four columns all right not counting the beams and so on this way the project will probably end up with fifty thousand activities or so and I wouldn't go that far so how far would I go well I have a confidence relationship with the division of the project what's my objective of dividing those activities to have a grip on them and that grip means a confidence in assessing that activity in knowing the status if I asked you if you put the foundation of huge building as one activity and I came to you and said what's the status jail with with that activity well it's going to be very subjective question because you have thousands of operations going on with the foundation some of them are done some of them are behind some of them are ahead some of them are not to be done until not to start until two weeks later and so on so it's it's hard to give an accurate answer so let's divide that foundation into little activities and then if I ask you Jerell what's the situation of the spread footings well you can tell me more objectively and more scientifically or are about 60% so I would divide the project until I get that confidence I look at the number of units or or days in it and I said I have at least 90 percent confidence that that is true so that leads me to the last point would I have that all activities in the project at the same level of details not necessarily maybe you have a bigger activity let's say we have excavation and it's very simple we are excavating eight thousand cubic meters of sand so I don't have to divide it while a concrete operation next to it yes I have to divide it to a further level of details because I can't get a grip of it the key here is confidence once you feel you're confident with an activity stop don't break it down once and let's say the confidence is not going to be hundred percent anyway let's put a threshold for us maybe 80% or 90% and once you reach that stop to me I can't tell you there is an optimum number and no one can give you a magic formula that will give you an exact optimum number of activities in your project it is your feeling as a professional don't go too much into tiny tiny activities that would be a nightmare for administering this project and don't go in only few that would be also difficult to manage large activities and in fact the optimum between umber between them lies in your judgement in how confident are you with those durations and do you have good control over those activities

Channel: Plan Academy Inc.

Views: 6,404

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: project controls, project management, primavera p6, project controls tools, project controls software, primavera p6 application, project scheduling, construction project, construction, saleh mubarak

Id: Rf1UV3WuoMk

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 09 2018