Primavera P6 Importing Activities and Running Schedule

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From the course by Columbia University

Construction Scheduling

489 ratings

Columbia University

Construction Scheduling

489 ratings

Course 2 of 4 in the Specialization Construction Management

Learners will discover the key project scheduling techniques and procedures including; how to create a network diagram, how to define the importance of the critical path in a project network, and defining project activities float. Also covered are the fundamentals of Bar Charts, Precedence Diagrams, Activity on Arrow, PERT, Range Estimating, and linear project operations and the line of balance.

From the lesson

Technology Applications for Scheduling

Dareen Salama, of the STV Group, discusses the technology applications used for scheduling. Dareen provides an overview of the applications used for scheduling development, schedule analysis, sharing and collaboration and visualization.

Technology Applications: Getting Started8:29

Software Applications Overview9:13

MS Project Scheduling Overview13:09

MS Project: A Deeper Dive17:10

Primavera P6 Overview12:50

Primavera P6 Critical Path11:23

Primavera P6: Gantt Chart12:39

Primavera P6 Importing Activities and Running Schedule9:50

Meet the Instructors

Ibrahim Odeh, Ph.D., MBA
Instructor, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University
Director of Research and Founder, Global Leaders in Construction Management

So let me go to my downloads.

There we go.

So it exports this format.

So let's look at this format for a second.

So right here you have tasks, you have a tab for tasks.

And that tab shows you activity IDs.

Activity IDs are super critical because that's what it maps to.

The status which I don't really care about at this point, the WBS code,

the task names, all these activities, and original durations.

In another tab you have the relationships.

So you have a predecessor, successor, relationship.

So lets assume I'm working on a project that has lots and lots of activities and

how can I create this very quickly.

So I pre-created that project that we were looking at,

which is typically very similar to this format.

So let me open that file.

So it has the list of activities and their IDs and how I want their IDs to show.

The names of all the activities which I've been creating overtime.

So definitely, it's easier for me to list all the activities in Excel,

especially if I'm producing them from some other platforms.

So I could be producing them from the estimate,

from the schedule of values, from whatever other document I have on the project.

Even if it's at a different level than what the schedule will be at the end it

still helps to be able to import it from Excel.

And then I have the original duration.

And bear in mind that I'm keeping these tags.

These tags are exactly the same as what I exported and

it's what helps P6 import the data into the platform.

And then again, here you have the relationships.

So I have this whole file, not going to save it.

I'm going to go into P6, start a new project, so let me close all my projects.

So, actually let's go into that same one and delete what we've done.

And then reimport that whole project.

So I'm going to go File > Import.

XCR, XML or XL, so I'm going to select XL.

I'm going to select the file, so the file is available on my desktop, Right here.

I'm going to hit Next.

What am I importing?

I'm importing activities and relationships.

It automatically detected that I don't have expenses or

resources or resource assignments in that Excel file.

I'm going to click Next.

Where am I importing it to?

So the action is I'm going to update the existing project.

My options are to replace or to update.

And I'm going to import to this project.

And I'm going to hit Next, and then I'm going to hit Finish and

wait for it to import all this data and populate P6 for me.

Depending on the size of the project that exercise could take some time.

All right, so

now once the import is complete it shows you that the import was successful.

If there was any errors, if it didn't read any of some of the data then it'll

give you these errors and then you can just hit Close.

And now, it populated everything that I had in my Excel sheet into P6,

which makes my life so much easier than entering the data directly into P6.

The other thing, the last thing that you need to do after you've imported any list

of activity is you need to run the schedule.

A lot of people would just look out and see,

how comes all these activities are starting at the same time?

Well, I need to run my schedule and with this data day I'm going to click Schedule.

Going to wait for it, give it some time, and

then it automatically runs my schedule.

I can organize it, sort it by start date, so

it shows me the activities that start first at the top.

And it shows me my critical activities in red.

If I want to, again, filter it to show just critical activities I can click

on Filter > Customize and show just Critical Activities and Apply,

click OK, it shows me the Critical Activities from within that file.

All right, so that shows you how to create a project schedule,

set up some basic project settings, add specific list of activities,

their durations, their predecessors and successors,

more than one predecessor or successor.

If you want to change the relationship type you can go on here,

click on the activity, click on the Relationships tab and

then you can change the relationship type right here.

Again, it defaults to finish to start, but

you can change that relationship type to anything else.

You can import data from Excel,

which makes life much easier if you need to make major edits.

For example in Excel you can do find and replace and

make major edits to your activity IDs or your activity names, or if you need to

transfer information from one platform to the next you can also use Excel for that.

If you want to submit the file.

So let's say you're done, you've created that file.

If you want to submit it to someone else,

best way to do it is to go to File > Export and create an XER package.

You need to make sure that that XER is compatible with the version

of the person that you're sending it to, otherwise they won't be able to open it.

And then you can hit Next and then you'll create projects or

resources if you're using resources it's recommended to export that data as well.

And you select the project similar to how we exported Excel,

you will save the file and send them that XCR file.

If you need to print the information, typically when you submit it,

you submit an XCR file and you also print the information, so you go to File, and

then you click let's say Print Preview just to see how it looks to start with.

So that's really not exactly the presentable type of PDF that

you want to submit.

So you can go to Page Setup and

then I could say maybe I want to fit the time scale.

Typically the best thing to do is to fit the time scale to one page wide,

if it's a small project.

If it's not then that's not really what you want to do.

You can also fit it to be one page wide by one page tall if again it shows on one

project.

So let me do that.

I'm not sure why it's not doing that here.

So make it 11 by 17.

Let's fix the page setup again.

So let's look at the time scale.

So if we click on Options, okay?

I don't want to show May 2010 definitely, so I'm going to set

it to the project's earliest start and the project finish and Apply.

So that makes much more sense.

I do not want to show, let's say grid lines.

Makes it a bit cleaner.

Maybe I want to add some items under here, so

let's say I want to add a header and a footer.

So let's say I want to add,

And then on the header you can add whatever it is that's the project name.

You can add any items, you can add logos and pictures and so on.

Click OK.

So then you have a PDF that is a little bit more presentable.

And then you can print that PDF on a PDF printer or

anything else depending on your computer settings.

So let me close out of that.

So that concludes our session on software application.

So we've covered Microsoft projects, we've covered Primavera P6,

little bit of hands on just to get you started.

Like I said before, I encourage you to download the software, utilize it,

test its limits, figure out if it satisfies your needs or not.

And then feel free to explore and click on different menus and import different

schedules and figure out what is it that really best suits your needs.

Thank you for attending and good luck with your scheduling.

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