You’re planning your project in Primavera P6. You’ve created your P6 schedule and added the high level WBS (Work Breakdown Structure). You have your OBS (Organizational Breakdown Structure), activity codes, and resource structure started. Now is a good time to develop your project level calendars.
I usually start by developing the 7-day workweek calendar. This is a simple calendar to create in Primavera P6.
We start by going to the “Enterprise” tab at the top of the page, select “Calendars…”, and then select “Global”.
Figure 1
There is most likely a 7-Day Workweek Global calendar to select. Highlight this calendar and select “Modify…”.
Figure 2
Notice all the days are Standard and the Work hours/day value is 8. If we select the “Detailed work hours/day radio button, we also see the work hours are from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM with no break. Don’t worry about not having the break if the project in not going to be resource driven. If it is, then make this calendar match what the resource calendar workday will be.
Figure 3
We know this Global 7-Day Workweek calendar is good for our use. We can now select the “Project” radio button to add this calendar as a project level calendar. Simply select “Add”, highlight the Global 7-Day Workweek calendar and select the “plus” button on the right side of the box or double click.
Figure 4
Then change the name of the calendar to reference your project schedule.
Figure 5
You can highlight the new Project Level calendar and select “Modify” to double check the work days…. But most importantly, make sure you select “<None> for the “Inherit holidays and exceptions from Global Calendar” drop menu. This will prevent any changes someone may make in your global calendars from affecting those changes to your Project Level calendar.
If you did not have a 7-Day Workweek in your Global Calendars, you can easily create one by adding a calendar at your Global box and copying from whichever calendar may already be close to what you’re looking for.
You can select the Standard 5-Day Workweek calendar to copy. Then simply rename it in your Global Calendars, (it will be hear for use in new project schedules). You can then modify it by selecting the “Workweek” button and going through each day of the week to set it as “Work”
Figure 6
You should now have a Project Level 7-Day Workweek calendar based on 8 hour workdays. You could change the work hours per day in the “Workweek” area for each day. (You can do this for any calendar, making it easy to change to 10-hour days…).
Figure 7
Creating the 5 Day Workweek with Holidays is similar. I usually copy the Global “Standard 5 Day Workweek” calendar, rename it as my Project level calendar, and modify to add non-work days for Holidays, and weekends if they’re not already non-work days.
Figure 8
If I need a 5-Day Workweek with holidays and weather days, I do the same copy and rename from the Global Calendar. I then add the holidays as non-work days. Then I go back and add the anticipated weather non-work days.
Since we don’t know what exact days these may fall on, we simply “sprinkle” them in the month or work period. I prefer to use the Wednesdays. If there are three weather non-work days, I select three Wednesdays. If there are four, I select four. If there are not enough Wednesdays, I use Tuesdays and Thursdays. My goal is to keep the spread out and not use Mondays or Fridays. But everyone has their own method.
Figure 9
Note that I have not selected “<None> for the “Inherit holidays and exceptions from Global Calendar” drop menu shown in Figure 9. If I do not make this selection, any changes to the Global Calendar shown, “6-Day Workweek” in this case will affect those changes in my Project Level calendar, and I won’t know or be notified. This could cause real issues.
Summary
As you can see, creating Primavera P6 project level calendars is not that difficult. It is well worth the effort as well as being a best practice. When you are finally developing the activities to support your WBS, assigning project level calendars to your activities will be easy and the calendars will stay accurate!
Plan your schedule….
Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
Paul has extensive experience as a Construction Manager. Over time, he became convinced that there is a critical shortage of skilled planning and scheduling professionals in our industry. In 2009, he backed away from his work as a Construction Manager and began focusing on planning and scheduling. He now serves our industry as a subject matter expert in this area.
You can visit Paul’s LinkedIn account to learn more about him and his website is http://www.conschmanservices.com