MS Project 2000 & Multiple Calendars?

[bobbyb2112]

Why does it appear that MS Project 2000 is unable to properly handle multiple calendars? I can create several different calendars with varying start & finish times and daily durations, but it seems as though all of the man-hour calculations are based upon the values on the "Change Working Time" - "Options" screen.

I am planning an upcoming outage that will probably require overtime shifts at the start and finish, but straight time in the middle section. Setting up the calendars is no problem, but the calculations that yield the man-hours seem to only rely upon the screen referenced above. And according to the help screens, that is how it is designed to work.

Do I need to create separate MS Project files to handle my situation, or is there some way to handle it all within one file? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[WillRussell]

You can change the calendars for each resource in the "Change Working Time" dialogue box if you use the drop down box at the top, this seemed to work for me, but I would leave the Standard Project Calendar well alone as changing this can lead to all sorts of problems.
If not it could be to do with the task type you're using, Fixed Duration, Fixed Units or Fixed Work and whether or not they are "effort driven"...... but I'm not so sure about that.
You could try using Task Calendars but I tried this once and it just got messy.

 

[bobbyb2112]

Thanks WillRussell, but I'm not sure that will solve my problem. I will look into your task type and Task Calendar suggestions. Maybe there's a solution to be found along that path.

As best as I can tell, the calculations are driven by the values on the "Change Working Time" - "Options" screens. And this value will override any given calendar assigned to any given resource and/or task. This value is also not linked to a given resource/task, but the project as a whole. If you change it after entering activities, it recalculates everything that was previously entered.

For example, if a given calendar is based upon 10-hour days and the default values on the "Options" screen are based upon 8-hour days, the 8-hour value drives the man-hour and duration calculations. Even though my resource is tied to the 10-hour per day calendar, if I enter a one day duration, MS Project assigns 8 hours to the task. And conversely, if I enter 10 hours for the duration, it will spread that 10 hours across 1.25 days. I can rebalance the 10 hours per day activities by changing the defaults on the screen referenced above to 10 hours per day, but that will mess up any of the 8 hours per day activities as it recalculates the whole project.

I not sure that MS Project can truly work with multiple calendars within a single project. I think that I'll have to be more creative in entering and extracting information from it. I need to be able to accurately balance my resources for this upcoming outage.

Thanks again.

 

[WillRussell]

Bobby,

If you look at the method for "How to allocate varied resources for different times during a task?" I suggested in another thread you can use this to allocate resources when you like but you could also change the amount of work they do by editing the work in the Task Usage View directly in the right hand pane, use the correct time scales to account for different patterns of work, it should work, the only thing is it will be time consuming to set up.

Will

 

[bobbyb2112]

Thanks again Will. Where I used to work, the planners used P3. I was an estimator and would have only considered myself a novice P3 user. However, my planning buddies say that the whole point of being able to set up multiple calendars is to have the program make the man-hour and resource calculations for you. Assign a welder to a task under an 8-hour per day calendar, and the resource calculation is done per that calendar. Assign another welder to a task under a 10-hour per day calendar, and the calculations reflect that calendar. They say that P3 does not use any default hours/day or days/week reference for such calculations, but rather uses the individual calendars. They say that this makes P3 a very useful tool, especially when planning turnarounds that might have staggered or overlapping shifts.

Do you know if they're comments about P3 are accurate? At this point, I may just have to slug out something with MS Project and use manpower loaded "sticky notes" to step out the job. Later.

 

[WillRussell]

Bobby,

Not sure about P3, I've only used it briefly about 5 years ago when I did some work for a consultancy, I've been using various versions of MSProject for about ten years and seem to find it does most of the things that people actually want!

I'm not sure why you cannot seem to get the calendars to work. I always try solutions out before I reply to these questions and it seemed to work for me, maybe I didn't understand the problem correctly, anyway good luck.

Will