Cost and Units Budget Values
The Budget Values in Primavera are assigned to both Units and Costs for each Resource and Expense at the time the Resource or Expense is assigned to an Activity.
Budget Values reside in the current project and in all Baseline Projects.
Baseline Project and Values
A Baseline project is a complete copy of a project including the relationships, resource assignments and expenses.
Baseline Dates are also known as Target Dates and are normally considered to be the approved Project Early Start and Early Finish dates of an un-progressed project, which are recorded by saving a Baseline project.
Baseline Duration is the original planned duration of an activity, calculated from the Early Start to the Early Finish of an Activity.
Baseline Costs are also known as Budgets and represent the original project cost estimate.
These are the figures against which the Actual Costs and Cost at Completion (or Estimate at Completion) may be compared.
Baseline Units is also known as Budgeted Quantity and represents the original estimate of the project quantities. These are the quantities against which the consumption of resources may be compared.
The Baseline values are values against which project progress is measured. All these values may be read by and compared with the current project values and show variances from the original plan.
A Baseline would normally be created prior to updating a project for the first time. The Primavera Variance columns use Baseline data from Baseline Projects to calculate variances.
Information Required to Update a Resourced Schedule
A project schedule is usually updated at the end of a period, such as each day, week or month. One purpose of updating a schedule is to establish differences between the plan, which is usually saved as a Baseline, and the current schedule.
The following information is required to update a resourced schedule:
Activities completed in the update period:
Actual Start date of the activity.
Actual Finish date of the activity.
Actual Costs and Quantities (Units) consumed or spent on Labor Resources, Material Resources and Expense. These may be calculated by the software or collected and entered into the software.
Activities commenced in the update period:
Actual Start date of the activity.
Remaining Duration or Expected Finish date.
Actual Costs and/or Actual Quantities. These may be calculated by the software or collected and entered into the software.
Quantities to Complete and Costs to Complete. These may be calculated by the software or collected and entered into the software.
Activities Not Commenced:
Changes in Logic or Constraints, or
Changes in Duration, or
Changes in estimated Costs, Hours or Quantities.
Other Considerations
Primavera may calculate Actual Costs and the Costs to Complete by turning on a relationship between the Units and Resource Units. When this relationship is turned off costs may be entered manually. lf the Actual Costs are to be calculated by Primavera then the Actual Costs do not need to be collected.
A marked-up copy of the schedule recording the progress of the current schedule is often produced prior to updating the data with Primavera. Ideally, the mark-up should be prepared by a physical inspection of the work or by a person who intimately knows the work, although that is not always possible. lt is good practice to keep this marked-up record for your own reference. Ensure that you note the date of the mark-up (i.e., the data date) and, if relevant, the time.
Often a Status Report or mark-up sheet is distributed to the people responsible for marking up the project's progress. A page break could be placed at each responsible person's band, and when the schedule is printed, each person would have a personal listing of activities that are either in-progress or due to commence. This is particularly useful for large projects. The marked-up sheets are then returned to the scheduler for data entry into the software system.
Other electronic methods, such as the Primavera Timesheet system or an e-mail based system with spreadsheet or pdf attachments, may be employed to collect the data. Irrespective of the method used, the same data needs to be collected.
lt is recommended that only one person update each schedule. There is a high probability for errors when more than one person updates a schedule.
Activity Window- Percent Complete Types
There are three % Complete types which may be assigned to each activity. The default is adopted from the setting in the Defaults tab in the Projects Window.
• Physical
• Duration
• Units
After an activity has been created, the Percent Complete Type may be changed in the General tab of the Activities Window:
The Activity Percent Complete may be updated in the Status tab of the Activities Window where the Percent Complete Type is also displayed:
Each Percent Complete Type has its own data column. There is also an Activity % Complete column which is linked to and displays the value from the Percent Complete Type column that has been assigned to the activity. See the following picture:
Physical Percent Complete Type
An activity assigned Physical Percent Complete Type may be entered in the Physical % Complete or the Activity% Complete. This field has no impact and is not linked to either the Resource Units or the Actual and Remaining Durations of the Activity.
Physical % Complete must be used when Steps are being used to record progress.
The Physical Percent Complete type is used when the progress of an Activity is being measured outside Primavera. For example, an activity representing the installation cable that is measured by length of cable installed would have the percent complete calculated by:
• % Complete = Qty. of Gable Installed I Total Qty. of Cable to be Installed.
Duration Percent Complete Type
With Duration Percent Complete there is a link established between:
Duration % Complete
Original Duration
Remaining Duration
A Duration % Complete may only be entered after an Actual Start Date has been assigned and should be in the past with respect to the Current Data Date. A change in one parameter will change one other:
A change in the Duration % Complete will change the Remaining Duration, and
A change in the Original Duration or Remaining Duration will change the Duration % Complete:
The Actual Duration is calculated from the duration of Actual Start to the Current Data Date.
The Activity Units Percent Complete is still calculated from the Resource Units.
Using Steps to Calculate Activity Percent Complete
An activity percent complete may be defined by using steps. A Step is a measurable or identifiable task required to complete an activity. in summary to use steps:
A Step template may be created by selecting Enterprise > Activity Step Template .. to open the Activity Step Templates form.
Add as many steps as required and assign their weigh which will be used to apportion the percent complete of an activity.
Check the Activity percent complete based on steps check box in the Projects Window, Calculations tab.
Select the Physical in the % Complete Type for each activity that is to be measured by steps in the General tab of Activity Window,
Select the Steps tab in the Activity Window,
Format the columns you wish to display,
Add the number of steps you require or import from a Step Template,
Edit the descriptions as required,
Edit the Step Weight so the Step Weight Percent reflects the desired value of the Step,
Check the Completed check box as each step is completed and this will update the percent complete.
The Remaining Duration may be updated from the Step % Complete via the Physical % Complete using a Global Change.
Updating Resources
There are many permutations available for calculating resource data. Due to the number of options available in Primavera, it is not feasible to document all the combinations available for resource calculation.
Resource units and costs may be updated by either:
Estimating Progress automatically, a process titled Applying Actuals, or
Entering the data using the Resource tab in the Activities Window, or
Entering the data using the right section of the General tab in the Activities Window.
Resource Tab
The Resources tab may be used to update the resource Units (and Costs if the Units and Costs have been unlinked with the Cost Units Linked field). An updating Iayout could be created and the columns in the Resources tab formatted to your updating method see the following picture:
Status Tab
The right window may be used for updating the resources.
When there is one resource there will be a direct link between this form and the values assigned to the resource.
When there is more than one resource there will be a proportional change to all the resource values when a change is made in this form.
Applying Actuals
This function automatically:
Statuses activities with resources as if they went according to the Planned Dates (this may change Actual Dates and current schedule dates) and only updates activities in the period from the old to the New Data Date.
To Apply Actuals:
Select Tools > Apply Actuals ... to open the Apply Actuals form,
lf more than one project is open a different data date may be selected for each project.
The Activity requires the Task Auto Compute Actualsfield checked for this function to apply to an Activity and all the Resources assigned to an activity.
There are some important issues with using Apply Actuals that must be understood:
This function uses the Planned Dates not the current schedule dates to progress a schedule so Actual Start Dates and the Early Finish dates may be changed by this function. This calculation process makes this function of little use to most schedulers.
The Apply Actuals function only updates resourced activities and un-resourced activities such as milestones have to be updated manually when the task Auto Compute Actuals is not checked.
With the introduction of Progress Spotlight there would appear to be no need to use Apply Actuals to automatically update a project and Update Progress and/or Progress Spotlight could be used. But as the Update Progress function also re sets Actual Dates to Planned Dates this make this function also of little use to many schedulers.
Updating Expenses
Expenses are updated in a similar way to resources and will not be covered.