Different Resources Types in MS PROJECT 2010 and what do you have to know about them!

 

What are RESOURCES in MS PROJECT 2010. Those are people (human resources), equipment (machines), material (bricks, oil, butter,..) and cost needed to perform the Task(s), and to reach the Project Goals and Objectives.

There are three types of Resources in MS PROJECT 2010: Work Resources, Material Resources i Cost Resources.

• Work Resources are people and machines, and they need time (hours, days, weeks, etc.) to perform the Tasks
• Material Resources are consumables like bricks, oil, concrete etc., and they are time independent.
• Cost Resources are time independent resources, like Airplane tickets. If you are traveling from Zagreb, Croatia (my hometown) to Amsterdam it will cost you, approx. 300€, no matter how long will you travel (1 hour or 1,5 hours). If you are traveling from LA to Boston the price will be different. Those type of Resources is needed in your Project to analyze your costs (from my example, how much money did we spend for the travelling with airplanes).

As you already know you can add resources in MSPROJECT through Resource sheet:

There are several fields and Resource Type depended:

• Resource Name: Name of the Resource. Be very careful. If you add two or more resources with the same name, MS PROJECT 2010 will consider them as different resources, even there is obvious mistake. Here is an advice. After you put all Resources in the Resource Sheet, sort them by the name and delete duplicated Resources:

and after that:

and you will get:

Select all duplicated Resources (hold CTRL key and Click on the row heading on the right side of the screen):

and press the Delete key. After that you will get:

 

After that, DO NOT FORGET TO SORT Your resources by ID:

and you will get:

 

• Type: Here you can choose one of the three resource types: Work (Default), Material and Cost. If you are entering only Work or Material resources you can choose the table which contains fields applicable to this particular type of resource: Entry-Work Resources or Entry – Material Resources table:

• Material: If resource type is Material Resources in this field you are putting measure unit (like tons, meters, pieces, etc.). This field is disabled for other resource types.
• Initials: You can put initials for the Resource (like NT for Nenad Trajkovski), but you can use this field for other purposes. I will write about this in one of my next posts.
• Group: If you are going to have a group of resources (like Purchase, Vendors, Painters etc.) here is the place to put the name of the group
• Max: This field is only enabled for the Work Resources. You can put 10%, 50%, 100%, 300%, or any number you want (except 0%). This field is of big, I will tell GREAT importance, and it is used (with other parameters) to calculate the WORK FIELD. It will be explained very briefly in my post where I am going to write about assigning resources to the tasks. For now, just remember that if you are put, for example 100%, for the Max, it means that that Resource is 100% available for your Project.
• Standard Rate: This is Standard fee (MONEY) for the resource. You can put that fee like, for example 100/hour, /day etc. This is true only for Work type. If, for example, resource has $50/hour, and it will work 5 days and 8hours per day, cost for this resource will be 40 hours X $50 = $2.000. This field is disabled for the Cost type, because for this type of resources you will put the exact cost when you will assign that cost to the Task.
• Overtime Rate: Same as Standard Rate but here you are going to tell how will your resource be paid by the overtime work. This field is enabled only for Work type of resources (there is no overtime work for bricks, or air ticket, is it? )
• Cost/Use: That is also known as a Setup fee. For example, if you have Resource named: Nenad – the plumber, and it has $100/hour as a standard fee, and he is charging his travel to your home $50, no matter how long he is going to drive, than you will put $50 in that field. This field is disabled for the Cost type of resource, because it is seamless.
• Accrue at: You have three choices: Prorated, Start i End. In this field you will decide how will costs be charged, e.g. when will you charge those costs!. Prorated means that if, for example, cost for the task is $1.000, and only 20% of the task is finished, it will be $200 charged! Start means that this $1.000 will be charged as soon as the task begins, and End means that this $1.000 will be charged not before the tasks ends.
• Base Calendar: You are assigning any specific calendar for the resource if you have one. I wrote about that in one of my previous posts. Obviously, this field is enabled only for Work type.
• Code: If you have any specific code for you resource put it here.

There are two types of resources: Committed and Proposed. Committed (Default) means that you are 100% sure that this resource is available to your Project. If the Resource is Proposed (TENTATIVE), it means that you NEED that resource, but you do not know if it will be available when you will need it. If you want to make the Resource as Proposed, double click on it and you will get:

And, for the end of this post, if you know that your resources are Generic (for example, Developers, so you know their job, but you don’t know their names) you can make them as Generic if you double click on the Resource and after that you will get:

Until my next post, best Regards!

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