Are Resource Codes Helpful In a Turnaround Schedule? Yes!

Using Resource Codes has been very helpful on many Turnarounds. Often on a Turnaround (or any large project) you need to report resource availability and requirements in your schedule by Craft (trade) and Company.

But that is often not the way the resource dictionary hierarchy is set up? And you likely are not able to do anything about that since the Administrator probably controls that.

Resource Codes

An easy solution to the reporting requirement is using resource codes. This gets you the best of both worlds. The corporate structure remains intact, but the plant or the turnaround team can still introduce coding they need.

In your resource dictionary, your current project resources may look something like this:

The resource hierarchy does not reflect craft/company (other than as a subset of elements) specifically, but that is fine; it does not have to.

You can easily create layouts or reports capable of rolling up the resources by craft/company by simply assigning (and using) a couple of resource codes; one code for craft, one for company.

With the applicable codes assigned to the resources used in our projects, we can view the resource profile rolled up by craft, then company. In our case we will just look at a small file sample, but multiple project resource profiles can be rolled up in a similar manner. Assigning resource codes allows use of these codes not only in the resource profile, but the resource assignments screen, tabular reports, and tracking layouts. We will have a look at the resource profile below.

From the left display bar in the resource profile window click Group and Sort By, then Customize (above).

In the Group and Sort dialogue box, the CRAFT then Company codes have been entered in the Group By section (above).

The High Level Roll Up for Pipefitters in our small example combines the Pipefitter availability and requirement in the schedule.

To view the details one level down click the ‘+’ beside Pipefitter (above).

The resource roll up expands one level, you can now view the company level for Pipefitter also.

We only have one resource for pipefitters under Triple “S” so of course the requirement/availability profile will be the same at the Company or individual resource level in this example (below).

The EDM Site Services Pipefitter resource profile is below. (Keep in mind that the Pipefitter craft profile viewed earlier is the Triple “S” and EDM Site Services pipefitter profiles combined.)

A second example is the Pneumatic Technician craft resource profile (below).

As with the Pipefitter example, clicking to expand the Pneumatic Technician Craft (above) allows the ‘drill down’ to the two specific companies and resources that make up the Pneumatic Technician Craft roll up (below).

Stacked Histograms

Don’t forget, resource codes can also be used in Stacked Histograms – a couple of simple examples below:

Use resource codes to help you quickly and create layouts and reports to expedite monitoring and reporting.

Using the Craft and Company resource codes allows roll up not only within one schedule but across multiple schedules retaining the drill down functionality to focus on increased detail when required.