Resources & Resource Allocation in Primavera P6
Resource management is an important activity in project management. Generally, project managers need resource usage reports for the actual works in order to understand the real performance of their projects. They make a comparison between the planned, earned, and actual quantities in order to make a decision regarding their project’s productivity. There are many tools and software available in the market for this purpose and Primavera P6 is one of them. Primavera P6 resource assignments feature enables you to assign material, labor, and equipment resources and costs to your schedule. Resource allocation, and, possible over-allocation of labor resources can be tracked by the reports in Primavera P6. This article discusses the types of resources and demonstrates how to load cost and resource in Primavera P6
Resource Planning & Types of Resources in Primavera P6
Resources include the labor and equipment that are used to perform activities within a project. Resources are time-based and they are often used between activities. Creating a resource pool may be useful to define the organization’s resource structure and supports the allocation of resources to the relevant activities.
If you want to make resource planning in Primavera P6, you can easily create and assign resources to activities with the help of the Resources tool of P6. This tool will help you to list and organize all the project resources by their type. It is possible to create and assign labor, material, and equipment resources in Primavera P6. Allocation and distribution of resource quantities can be seen from the “Resource Assignments” window.
You can also define a resource’s roles, calendar, contact information, and time-varying prices if needed.
Defining Resources in Primavera P6
For better understanding, let’s review a sample project schedule.
We have a sample pipeline project and the activities are grouped as per “Activity Types” such as Pre-Construction Survey, Survey and Stacking Out, Clearing And Grading, Hauling & Stringing, Bending, and Welding as seen in the figure below.
Primavera P6 Resource Allocation Figure 1
We will define labor resources and assign them to the activities.
In order to define a resource, select Enterprise | Resources from the main drop-down menu at the top of the screen.
If the “Resources” window is empty, select Display | Filter By: All Resources as shown in Figure 2.
Primavera P6 Resources Figure 2
We will define one labor resource for each task instead of assigning specific people.
Select Edit | + Add and type the Resource ID and the Resource Name. Pre-Construction Survey is the first labor resource in our project. It represents all the workforce needed to perform the Pre-Construction Survey activity, Figure 3.
Types of Resources in Primavera P6 ,Figure 3
In this example, we will not insert a unit price for the resource because we will insert a total budgeted quantity and cost the resource.
How to Assign Resources to Activities in Primavera P6?
After defining all the resources in Primavera P6, the assignment process comes into play. Here we will assign them to the relevant activities by selecting Project | Activities from the main drop-down menu at the top of the screen as shown in Figure 4
Primavera P6 Resources Figure 4
In order to assign a resource to an activity, we will open the activity details by selecting View | Show on Bottom| Details from the main drop-down menu at the top of the screen.
We will assign resources by using the Add Resource button at the bottom left hand of the screen, Figure 5.
How to load resources in Primavera P6? Figure 5
After assigning the “Pre Construction Survey” resource to the “Pre Construction Survey” activity, we will insert “Budgeted Units” and “Budgeted Cost” for the activity. Let’s assume that the “Pre-Construction Survey” activity will be performed with 5500 manhours and the total cost of this activity is $60.000, Figure 6.
Primavera P6 Resources Figure 6
Make sure that the activity type is “Task-Dependent” and the duration type is “Fixed Duration & Units. Check them from the “General” button at the bottom left hand of the screen, Figure 7.
Primavera P6 Resources Figure 7
Duration is fixed because we have determined the activity duration, that we do not want to change it depending on the resource quantity. We fixed the quantity because we have a total budgeted quantity for this activity. It will not change as the duration changes.
Using the Resource Usage Profile
The next step is to analyze the “Resource Usage Profile” after assigning resources to the activities and inserting budgeted cost and budgeted units. We will select View | Show on Bottom | Resource Usage Profile from the main drop-down menu at the top of the screen. Finally, we can see the budgeted units and costs from the “Resource Usage Profile”.
Summary
You can assign several resources to activities in P6 to track the resource and cost performance of your project. Primavera P6 resource assignments feature is a flexible tool for performing resource analysis and estimating the project cost. Primavera P6 not only shows the cost for each task but also shows the cost of each work break down structure deliverable and the entire project. Resource management is very important for project managers.
Note that resources are different than expenses because resources are time-based and expenses are one time expenditures. Therefore when the resources are leveled, expenses are not included.
In this article, we discuss how to load resources in primavera p6. If you want to add or share anything regarding this feature of primavera p6, you can do by using the comments box below.
External References
See Also
Linda Maltz is vice president of design and consulting at Cuboca, a project management training and consulting organization specializing in construction management and BIM. She is certified Primavera P6 Trainer.
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