Cost Resources and Actual value in MS PROJECT 2013

 

Hi,

I have a question about Cost Resources and Actual value in MS PROJECT 2013:

“Dear Nenad,

I defined a cost resource “Hotel” and a work resource “Thomas” with hourly rate of 50 USD. For both of these resources I selected the accrue at “Start”. I defined a task of 1 day duration and assigned Thomas to it. I also assigned 200 USD of Cost Resource “Hotel” to this task. Then I saved the baseline with baseline cost of 600 Dollars. When I make the task 50% complete, the Actual Cost only shows the Cost of work resource. Even when the task is 100% complete, the actual cost only reflects the cost of work resource. The behavior remains same even if the accrual method is changed to “Prorated” or “End”.

Can you suggest a work around?”

I wrote about this issue long time ago. From Microsoft point of View this is not a bug! From mine, it is. But, guess what. There is a workaround.

OK, let me make the same Scenario as my Reader has. I will make a Task so called Trip:

Now, I am going to make Thomas, and Hotel as resources.

I’m going to assign those Resources to the Task:

Now I am going to save the Baseline:

I will show you the Cost Table:

Now I’m going to tell MS PROJECT that Task is, for example 50% finished:

You can see that Actual Cost is $400!. Why? Because Tomas has Accrue at = Start, and that means that when the Task is completed even 0,1% MS PROJECT calculates 1 day = 8 hours = 8 hours * $50 = $400.

Why MS PROJECT does not calculate that for Cost Resource? Because it does not! So what do you have to do. You can use Resource Usage, or Task Usage View. I will, for this example, use Task Usage View:

And Now Back to the Cost Table:

Everything looks fine now. Boring? Yes it is I know.

The interesting thing is that if you assign only Cost resource to the Task, everything works fine. Tri it!

Regards!

Resources and Over allocation in MS PROJECT 2013!

 

Hi,

very often there is a question: “When is Resource over allocated, and how MS PROJECT 2013is dealing with it?”

That is very easy to explain. First I will ad the three Tasks:

and my Resource will be John Wayne:

Of course that I will assign John Wayne to all three Tasks:

As you can see, John Wayne is over allocated in all three Tasks. Let’s see Resource Usage diagram:

Now, suppose that John Wayne is a Superman! He can work 24 hours at Monday, so you do not want him to be marked as over allocated. You can do it here:

and I will get:

WHY? The answer is easy! I told MS PROJECT 2013 that Over allocation is calculated on Week by Week Basic. What dose it mean? It means that MS PROJECT 2013 is making calculation: 5 days * 8 house per day = 40 hours. John Wayne is occupied on 3 Tasks (Monday) * 8 hours = 24 hours, and that is less than 40 hours.

I will add Task 4, and Task 5, and I will assign John Wayne on it, and I will get:

John Wayne is now occupied 40 hours!

Finally I will add Task 6 with 1 minute Duration, and I will assign John Wayne to it, and I will get:

Tralaaaaaaaa! John Wayne is Over allocated now because he is working 40 hours + 1 minute on six Tasks, and that is larger than 40 hours.

Finally, does it make a sense to put one Resource to work 40 hours + 1 minute on various Tasks at the same day? Of course not. So I will make predecessors for those Tasks:

John is still over allocated because in a week he is working more than 40 hours (even 1 minute more makes him over allocated)!

But what if John will work on Task 6 after Task 5?

He is not over allocated any more? WHY? Because Task 6 is scheduled on the next week!

You got the point, didn’t you!

 

Regards

Effort and non effort driven Tasks in MS PROJECT 2013

 

Hi,

here is the question from my Blog reader:

“Nenad:
Thanks very much for the posting!
Do you know if there is any way of setting up a different default for this operation? More specifically, suppose that I have many tasks assigned to “John” and I want to reduce the project time by hiring another person (it could be “Mary”) to share the work with John. If I simply add Mary to all tasks, MSP would assume that all I want to increase the amount of work all those tasks need – which is not the reason I’m adding Mary.
Would I have to add Mary one task after another, changing each one individually to “Reduce duration so the task end sooner, but requires same amount of work (person-hours)”? Or is that a way of adding Mary to all tasks with the “Reduce duration…” option?”

I wrote about that in one of my previous posts, but I will explain this issue again with MS PROJECT 2013.

First of all, where is the difference between Effort Driven, and Non Effort Driven Tasks in MS PROJECT 2013?

Effort driven Tasks are those which will (if you do not change it manually), reduce duration if you assign additional Resource to the Task. For example, if you have PAINT THE WALL Task, and it has duration = 4 days, and you have only one Resource assign to that task, when you add new Resource to that Task, duration will be 2 days!

On the other hand, Non effort driven Tasks are those which will not (if you do not change it manually), reduce duration if you assign additional Resource to the Task, but it will increase total amount of work (hours). For example, if you have READ THE BOOK Task, and it has duration = 4 days, and you have only one Resource assign to that task, when you add new Resource to that Task, duration will still be 4 days, but the total amount of work for that Task will be 4 days * 2 Resources * 8 hours/day = 64 hours.

Let me show you that. I have those two Tasks here:

and I have two Resources:

I will Assign John to the Paint the wall Task, and Mary to the Read the Book  Task, and I will get:

Let’s see where can we find if the Task is or is not effort driven:

Now I have Paint the wall as effort driven Task, and Read the Book, as Non effort driven Task.

Now I am going to assign Mary to the Paint the wall Task:

and I will get:

Now let’s see Read the Book Task:

You can see that the Task in Non effort driven, and that Mary will spend 32 hours of work (4 days * 8 hours per day).

I will add John to that Task:

and I will get:

You can see that Duration is same, and John will spend additional 32 hours on that Task, so it takes total of 64 hours for that Task.

But what if you always want shorter Task duration, after assigning additional resource, so you do not have to make each Task effort driven manually. You can do it here: File->Options, and than:

That’s it! Regards!

My arm is broken! :-(

 

Dear Blog Readers,

Just an notice, that I broke my arm last Friday, so I will write my post a little bit “slower”!

I hope that I will make a Post ‘till middle of the next week!

 

Regards!

Resource Pool and Local Resources in MS PROJECT 2013

 

Hi,

I have a question from one of my Blog readers:

“Hello, Nenad. First, I’d like to thank you by your posts. They are very helpful. Now, to my question. I have a central team coordinating and working in some local projects with local teams. I have one project file for each local project and one master file for them all, plus the central tasks. I have a pool for all resources, but is is getting crownded. I’d like to keep only the central team on the pool and have the local teams on each project file. I tried but each time I created a resource in the local file, it was also created in the pool. Do you know how to do it? Best regards.”

This Post will be Short one, and I will show the answer with MS PROJECT 2013.

Let’s suppose that we have one Resource Pool and three Projects. Here is The Resource Pool:

and Resources in this pool:

Remember, that Best Practice is that Resource Pool should not have any Tasks, just Resources.

Now I will create three Projects:

Now, I will assign John and Mary to all Tasks in all Projects. I’m going to show you how to do it in First Project, and I will do the same thing for Second, and Third Project:

and then:

and I will assign John and Mary to all Task in the First Project:

After I do the same thing for the Second and Third Project I will have:

The resources are over allocated, but forget this for now, because it is not the subject of this post!

Now I am going to add new Resource, for example Material Resource called Brick in my Second Project:

Now let’s look at the Resource Pool:

So, the answer in NO, you can not have both Local and global Resources by using Resource Pool

Regards

How to apply different pay rates for Material Resources in MS PROJECT 2013?

 

Hi,

again, my Blog reader has a problem:

“Hi dear
first I would like to say thanks for your above post, after that I would like to share one question with you which I have in mind, it is also something about cost calculation that’s why I am asking here:
How to set up different pay rate units such as ($/m, $/m2, $/m3, $/ton and so) … and that’s it. you know in most construction projects like building, roads, tunnel, canal even dam constructions cost of much of items such as excavation, drainage and so will calculated based on different pay rates as indicated above. for example if I want to setup cost of “excavation” task how I suppose to do that, if I have to setup unit pay rate of this task in resource sheets ? so which kind of resource I suppose to assign (work, material or cost resource) and how I use different pay rate ? or if I suppose to setup this kind of cost in different place, where is that place ?

with thanks and respect”

OK! I’ll do it in MS PROJECT 2013!

First thing first.

I will add two Tasks in MS PROJECT 2013:

Now I will add Concrete as Material Resource in My Project:

Now let’s say that this $1 is price per m3, and price per ton is $10 (just for example!)

I will put this $10 here:

Now suppose that for Task 1 I want to assign 10 m3 of Concrete, and for Task 2, 20 tons of concrete.

First for Task 1:

I will do the same thing for the Task 2 (with 20 in Units Field, and if I look at the Cost Table I’ll see:

Now, I need to change pay rate for Task 2. I will go to Resource Usage View:

Let’s look at the Cost Table again:

You can see that for Task 1 there is 10 m3 of Concrete with 1$ Price, and that makes Total Cost = 10*1=$10. For the Task 2 there is 20 tons of Concrete with 10$ Price, and that makes Total Cost = 20 * 20 = $20!

Piece of cake.

 

Regards!

I

Calendars and Moving Tasks to non working days in MS PROJECT 2013!

 

Hi,

again I have a question from my Blog Reader:

“I liked your article and thought you may have an answer to a question I have.
In Project 2010 with tasks set to Auto schedule if you schedule the start date for a task that has a resource assigned to start on a Non-working day, the planning wizard prompts you to either allow it to move it to the next working day or to change the day to working. The issue is that it changes the base calendar day to working and not the resource calendar. Do you know why or any setting that I need to alter so it changes the Resource calendar and not the Base Calendar. You can over come this by changing it to manual after you have manually changed the resource calendar day to working, but this takes time.

Any suggestions gratefully appreciated.”

Let’s go, with MS PROJECT 2013!

First I will create two Tasks:

and then two Resources:

Now I will assign John to Task 1, and Mary to Task 2:

Now I will show you the Standard Calendar:

as you can see, there are no exceptions for this Calendar.

Now, I am going to set Start date for Task 1, and Task 2. Task 1 will have 06.04.2013 (Saturday) as Start date, and Task 2 will have 07.04.2013 (Sunday)  as Start Date:

 

After setting Start date to the Task 2, I will get:

Let’s see a Base Calendar:

You can see that MS PROJECT 2013 made an exception for those two non working days as working days!

Well, that can be a trouble, because all new / existing Task will have those two days as working days.

But, if you want to make those two days only for particular Resource (let say John, or Mary), that you should modify John’s calendar!

Let’s look our Project as it was at the Beginning:

I want John to work at every Saturday, and Mary, at every Sunday!

and:

I’ll do the Same for Mary (I am not going to place this picture Again )

Now, I am going to set Start date for Task 1, and Task 2, again. Task 1 will have 06.04.2013 (Saturday) as Start date, and Task 2 will have 07.04.2013 (Sunday) as Start Date:

So, there is no exception for Base Calendar.

To conclude, if you want to make non working days to working days for particular resources, you can make your own Resource Calendar, or modify existing Calendar for particular Resources!

 

Regards,