Leveling Resources In Primavera P6 For A Turnaround Project
The proper management of resources on a turnaround project is vital to its success. Levelling functionality of Primavera P6 is heavily utilized by planners and schedulers to make sure the deadlines set by the turnaround (TA) management are met and resources are utilized in the optimum way.
Having proper leveling priority coding for a turnaround project is a must have. While Primavera P6 has a number of fields allowing a planner to prioritize activities in a turnaround schedule, out-of-the-box options (e.g. activity ID, activity leveling priority) often do not provide sufficient flexibility. When a planner wants to prioritize a number of similar equipment items in a schedule (e.g. pumps, exchangers, tanks) that have similar or the same criticality based on total float, the best option for leveling is to utilize activity coding. The results of leveling in such a case make a more realistic schedule and fully reflect the priorities set by the execution team.
Not all people fully understand how Primavera P6 levels resources. They hit the “Level” button and look at the resource profile, trying to see what has changed and what has not, without truly understanding how the leveling worked (and if it has not worked – why?).
The key to understanding P6 leveling is having the proper layout in place, choosing proper leveling priorities, and also defining in advance leveling priority coding and tagging activities accordingly.
The P6 layout for leveling should include the following columns:
- Level priorities in the exact same order they are listed in the Level Resources dialog box.
Oftentimes people will use standard (default) leveling priorities without realizing it is not helping them to level the resources at all. If P6 is not leveling properly it means either your priorities are weak (not sufficient for P6 to level properly) or the availability of resources is limited and there is no way you can meet the completion date without increasing the number of resources on your project. Bottom line: make sure you choose proper leveling priorities before starting to level resources in the project schedule. Make sure to analyze resource profile on a regular basis to have a true picture of the resource demand (according to your project schedule) vs availability. Also, make sure you have correct calendars on the activity and the resource assigned to it.
- Resources
- Start and Finish Dates
- Unleveled Start and Finish Dates
These are user defined fields (UDFs), that should be populated with unleveled dates before leveling. Global change should be used to populate unleveled start and finish dates. These unleveled start and finish dates can then be added to the Gantt chart so that you can easily see which activities are shifting as a result of leveling and why. This helps clearly show how the leveling priorities are working (or not working and why).
*Note, when the option “Preserve scheduled early and late dates” is selected in the Level Resources dialog box, Early Dates can be used instead of UDFs.
About the Author
Iryna Mykolayenko, PMP - Implementation Specialist
Iryna holds a Master’s Degree in law from Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University (Ukraine). She is an active PMP-certified member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), and an Oracle-certified Implementation Specialist (Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management), as well as a Primavera P6 trainer and consultant.
Since joining Emerald Associates in 2012, Iryna has been conducting open and on-site Primavera software and project management training courses for a wide variety of companies in North America, including companies from the oil and gas, engineering, construction, and health care industries, as well as many other industries. She has also been working as a consultant with several companies on their P6 setup and usage initiatives. The list of her clients includes Powell Canada, Spectra Energy, Shell, Toyo Engineering, IMV Projects, Syncrude, Keyera Energy, FAM Canada, Outland Camps, City of Hope Oncological Center (California), etc.