Primavera P6: Baselines Explained

this is Bill platoon managing partner of construction science we also have a dedicated training website Primavera scheduling comm where you'll see information on our online and in-person classes and we also will be posting videos in the near future today I want to talk about baseline schedules if you've been to our YouTube channel you might have seen another video we have called earn value and baselines we're going to expand upon that topic just a bit more today so that you understand everything about baselines in our experience the vast majority of users do not correctly use baselines and they don't quite understand how baselines are created by primavera part of it we can blame on Primavera because of what we see right here on my screen in the EPS view I'm showing the baseline column and you'll notice that every project seemingly has a baseline don't be fooled by this anything that says current project is not a baseline you should not refer to it as a baseline nor have you actually created a proper baseline so I'm going to show you a couple of steps here to make sure that we always have the proper baseline setup the first step goes back to the concept of earn value I'm going to show you the Earned value setting first we're going to put it on the wrong setting and then I think you'll appreciate why we don't use that particular setting so to reach the Earned value settings we go to admin admin preferences earn value and the correct setting would be anything that says current dates whether you use the first or second option is not too critical if you have a cost loaded schedule you might consider that if the budgets have changed over time then perhaps you'd want to use the first value the one you have to avoid is this and unfortunately when the software is installed Primavera defaults to this particular setting and most of us never think about it till we have a problem with our baselines I'm going to put it on the wrong setting let's close the file I've got a schedule update here and I'm going to open it and this is where it's going to be rather obvious that we have a problem with the baseline setting so I'm looking at a file here and you see some bars with progress and some that have not started yet specifically I want to see a schedule with progress because the planned setting under earned value will rear its ugly head right here we're going to create the first type of baseline where you're creating an exact copy of the current schedule now why would we do that well let's say that this is the current update and then next month I want to look backwards and compare progress to this update so this update was from May of 2010 next month perhaps I want to look back and compare progress to this schedule so it's quite common for me to make an exact copy of a schedule knowing that I'm going to be creating another update in the near future and I'd like the ability to compare these files so let's go and create a baseline first thing we do is project maintain baseline click on add and again or make an exact copy of the current schedule so I'll take the first option in a moment we'll be using the second option where we convert a file but if you follow my concept of setting up the initial baseline then the moment you're done with the true baseline of the schedule in other words the original plan with no progress then I actually go in and make an exact copy of that file a baseline of the baseline because when I copy the file once more to begin working on my first update I've already got the baseline schedule attached to the first update I don't have to do it separately here we're going to have to do it separately because we never had it before alright so here's our first baseline just an exact copy and you see the b1 extension to indicate baseline let's close this and now let's go back up to project assign baseline you can have more than one baseline so we need to explain the Primavera how to tell them apart so we're going to call our new baseline the project baseline we're also going to call it the primary user baseline and I'm doing this for what I think is a very good reason there are settings in p6 where you're going to be asked do you want to measure progress against the project baseline or the primary user baseline well you won't have to think about which one to use because they're both the same file and there's actually another reason that's pretty good too when we're in the database and you'll see this in a moment the only baselines they get displayed are this one so when other users are looking at your project if you have something other than the current file that you're looking at is the baseline meaning that this one does not match the user baseline they're going to think this is the only baseline or as you're going to be thinking well no I have this other one but they won't know that because they cannot see user baselines listed in the database in fact you won't see them either it's only because it's your schedule that you would know this so keep them matching and you got easier for yourself and everyone else keep in mind this is an exact copy of the current schedule we're going to display those bars right click and let's go to buzz mine are typically yellow and there you see project baseline now here's the primary but they don't really matter here they're the same thing so I'm going to go ahead and select project baseline click OK and here's our problem they don't match at all so many of these yellow bars are not even that close and specifically it's the ones that have progress the activities that are done don't seem to have the right yellow bars and the ones over here that are in progress meaning they've started but they're not finished you can see that those yellow bars don't match up either if you've ever looked at it this way you would notice the problem immediately but so many people just assume that these yellow bars somehow must be correct that because they're showing a baseline and they know what's scheduled it's supposed to represent that they believe they have the right one but when you make a copy of a file and the copy isn't even right then it becomes obvious but if you were to think that these yellow bars represented the true original plan you might be fooled by that but most of us who have worked with baselines very long start realizing when something just seems a bit off and this is the most clear example I can give you of baseline that totally does not make any sense so we're going to fix it we're going to go back to earn value and give it the proper settings again we go to admin admin preferences earn value and this time I'll pick one of those that's using current dates close this there's no Save button I will have to recalculate the schedule earn value is a calculation and these bars won't look right until we calculate it I'll schedule the project keeping the current data date now the bars match up correctly you can see that they look exactly like the target bars I should say the target bars look exactly like the the current activities on the screen and in these activities right here that are essentially out of progress or I should say out of sequence that they've started but something is holding up the remaining work you'll see that the yellow bar does span the entire time frame but still this is the correct way to see it the start and finish dates of both the current bars as well as the baseline bars match notice too that milestones don't show baselines so don't worry that you're not seeing those on the screen alright so we've got the setting correct we're getting a real baseline let's look at the other type of baseline where you actually do need to grab something like a much earlier schedule I'm going to grab the original baseline and compare it to this may update so let's go back to project maintain baseline and let's add another one this time we are going to be using the conversion tool have to do that in every instance where we're simply not copying the existing file this is my contract schedule and it's 1836 - 0 1 pay attention to that file name we're going to look for it in just a moment I click on the plus sign and now it's assigned I'm going to close this now to see those bars of course we need to identify them so I'll come up to project assign baseline we've already have one baseline in here so I'll keep the project baseline alone and obviously I'm not going to touch primary but we can use one of these other settings so I'm going to use the one that says secondary and I'm going to pick that contract schedule good now we know how to find it I want Primavera though it only show me one at a time so let's go back in and format the Gantt chart right click bars I'm going to turn off project baselines it's not that you can't she'll bolt both at the same time but I want you to just see the true contract schedule now I've actually relabeled it this in your program most likely would say secondary baseline a lot of users don't realize that they can retype these labels to anything that you want to see secondary baseline wouldn't mean a whole lot to anybody else I'm going to leave it at secondary baseline the way it normally is and you'll see what I'm talking about let's click OK now we're looking at truly the original plan compared to the current schedule and you can see some evidence of slippage we're also seeing some activities that don't have baselines and I think most of us would understand what that means we simply have some activities in the schedule that are new they didn't exist in the original plan so of course they won't have a baseline bar when we copied the file of course they did because all we did was make an exact copy let's go look at print preview though and see the problem with the way the bars are going to be labeled for other people who are looking at something like a printout let's go to print preview and let's look at the a chart legend which I have formatted to be in the lower left-hand corner of the printout and let me move a couple of things out of the way so we can see it better and there it is yellow means secondary baseline that's a meaningless term to anyone else tertiary which is the third baseline wouldn't mean anything primary use our baseline what's that what's a project baseline you have to keep in mind the word baseline is generic in p6 it has no specific reference we used to call them targets in p3 and suretrack if I said to you here's the current schedule of a target you wouldn't really guess what the target is you'd ask me but when you start telling people here's the current schedule in a baseline to compare it to they might assume you're talking about the original plan because that's what most of us think of as baseline but it's a generic term in p6 and it just means a target schedule so any earlier schedule could be a baseline so we have two real able this to make it abundantly clear what we're talking about secondary baseline is just not going to cut it so I Glac right-click in the chart and I've got it up here and again just click in here and change it I'm going to call it as I did before my contracts schedule now notice Primavera knows how to find it and I'll also know that when I call this one contract schedule how is it identified internally by Primavera well again secondary baseline bar this is the proper way of doing it to let everyone know what you're talking about when you say the word baseline also this change that I just made only affects one layout I'm not changing all the layouts on my screen so when you format a bar you're only formatting it specifically for one layout in this case you can see the name of my layout right here so this relabeling only affects that one layout which is good if you think about it because on other schedules my secondary baseline could be an entirely different schedule that we're talking about and not the contract schedule all right one last thing to consider when I converted that file I told you to pay attention to the file name let's go back to the database and let's go look for 1836 zero one it's gone it's actually attached to this file right here but what makes it difficult even for me is that the only baseline that gets listed in this column right here is the project baseline that's why I told you to make the primary baseline match the project baseline because no one sees the user baselines listed here I've got two of them as you know but only one of them will ever be listed and that's the project baseline so you need to decide which one is the most important because this is the only one that you can communicate easily to other users the only way anyone would know that I have two baselines would be either I'm showing both yellow bars meaning for both of those baselines so therefore my Gantt chart would say that or I give them access to the file itself they open up p6 they're looking at my file certainly they could figure out that I've got two baselines because this file is disappeared if I ever want to open it again I have to restore it back to the database right now it's more like a picture all we're seeing when we look at those yellow bars is the date for start and finish of the yellow bar we can display that information in the table as well the start and finish date but because it's not a live file I don't have the ability to ever go back and look at the logic and a lot of other things I might want to consider so to make sure that I still have access to the live file when I'm done with this comparison I will restore the file back to the database and that's what we'll do right now first thing we'll do is we're going to have to undo the process that we're currently using we're going to tell Primavera to stop looking for it so I'm going to remove the reference to the secondary baseline because otherwise it's like pulling a thumb drive out of your computer while you're still accessing data so we have to tell prim over to stuff at data and notice how the yellow bars just disappeared all right now let's go to product maintain mazing and we can restore the original contract schedule however we're restoring it not deleting it so pay attention do not delete that file you want to restore it if you try to delete it it's going to give you an extra warning are you sure you want to do that and that's when you should think twice the only one I might delete later on is this one because it's just an exact copy of the current update I don't need this baseline I've got that file right here so we've got it restored let's go back to the database and confirm that it's there and yes there it is alright I hope you enjoyed this little explanation of baselines if you follow these steps I think you'll always be looking at the right baseline and you'll certainly understand a lot more about baselines Lin the casual Primavera p6 user if you have any questions feel free to visit either of our websites construction science calm or Primavera scheduling comm thank you

Channel: Bill Pepoon

Views: 119,904

Rating: 4.8009949 out of 5

Keywords: Primavera P6 Baselines, P6 Baselines, Primavera P6, Primavera Scheduling, Primavera Software

Id: KTSW1PTwDAU

Length: 18min 33sec (1113 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 24 2013