Can I set up two different working times in one project?

[AlaskaRae]

I'm trying to map out a project. Some of the work is completed in Anchorage,
using regular office hours (standard). Another portion of the work is
completed on the North Slope in the oil field. A work day for these fellows
is from 6:00 am - 6:00 pm with a 30 minute lunch 7 days a week. If I use
standard working times 8-5 then it shortens the duration of my project. If I
use the "Slope's" working times, then I get strange decimals all over the
place. Help?

 

[davegb]

I'm trying to map out a project. Some of the work is completed in Anchorage,
using regular office hours (standard). Another portion of the work is
completed on the North Slope in the oil field. A work day for these fellows
is from 6:00 am - 6:00 pm with a 30 minute lunch 7 days a week. If I use
standard working times 8-5 then it shortens the duration of my project. If I
use the "Slope's" working times, then I get strange decimals all over the
place. Help?

You can create another calendar using "Tools, Change working time".
The standard calendar is there, along with 2 others. You can copy the
Standard, or any of the others, or create a new one from here. The
details are documented in the Help screens, if you don't know how to
navigate/edit the Calendar.

Hope this helps in your world.

 

[JulieS]

Hi AlaskaRae,

In addition to Dave's comments, if you are assigning resources to tasks,
you can use the additional calendar which Dave mentions as the base
calendar for those resources working on the North Slope oil field. To
keep durations from appearing oddly when comparing the tasks using the
Standard calendar to those using the 11.5 hours per day, 7 day per week
calendar, consider showing the duration in days not hours. Tools >
Options , Schedule tab and set the "Duration is entered in" to Hours.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project

 

[Steve House]

Duration is always measured in minutes so a given task's duration will be
the same regardless of the length of the workday. However the conversion of
minutes those to and from units of "days", "weeks" if you choose for
convenience to use those units for input depends on the setting of "Hours
per day" and "Hours per week" on the calendar options page. That is a
global setting so you have to pick one that gives the least confusion. Your
oil field calendar results in an 11.5 hour wourkday (do they really NEVER
get a day off??) while the standard calendar is an 8 hour workday. But you
really can't work with durations in units of "workdays" where a "1 Day" task
assigned to the oil field group is 11.5 hours long but a "1 Day" task
assigned the the home office group is 8 hours long. I have a task that
starts at 8 am and ends at 12 noon. If you've chosen to display durations
in days and have set "hours per day" besed on the standard calendar, that
task is listed as 0.5 days. If you've chose to define "hours per day" based
on the oil field calendar, that task is shown as 0.35 days. But it's the
same task requiring the same effort and lasting exactly the same duration
regardless of who does it. To get rid of fractional days if they're
confusing, reformat your durations to hours.