Excluding any other work while a critical task is under way

[KingKikapu]

I'm trying to schedule our Gypcrete subtrade into our construction plan
While the gypcrete is being poured, I cannot have any other work bein
done in my project plan. Is there a way to exclude work in Project o
any other task at the same time as my gypcrete task is underway

 

[Jim Aksel]

Make a Milestone of "Ready for Pour" and run all your tasks in the schedule
to that milestone that must occurr before the pour. You now have a single
merge point for all tasks prior to the pour. Make the milestone a predecessor
to "Pour Gypcrete." Now, you can make the tasks following the pour have the
gypcrete pour task as the predecessor. You can do it this way without having
more than one calendar.

You could also look at having two calendars. In Calendar1 you have all the
workdays you wish. In calendar2 you mark the days where you are pouring
Gypcrete as non-working days. Assign calendar2 to the entire schedule and
calendar1 to the gypcrete pour tasks. Unfortunately, as the scehdule
progresses you are are going to have tasks that will not complete on time or
will otherwise push the gypcrete pour. Now you will have to manually
re-adjust your calendar. I don't like that approach but it would work.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[KingKikapu]

Thanks Jim. Your first suggestion will probably be the closest thing
can get away with. The only issue with my company is they like t
schedule with little or no slack anywhere. In fact, most subtrades ar
staggered so closely, that if anything serious happens to the schedul
then the freight train tends to grind to a halt. In that case, I migh
have to use a finish to Start with a negative lag to keep thing
smoothly.

I'm not a fan of negative lags, but I don't see any other way to kee
the train rolling.


The second suggestion would probably not fly as we use 3 differen
calendars; our subtrades usually work 5,6 or 7 days a week.


Thanks for your advice.

 

[Rod Gill]

Another way is to set the Standard Calendar to have the pour hours as
non-working then have a new Base Calendar called Concrete Pour that you
assign only to the Pour Task. That way Tasks may still look overlapped, but
in the Usage View only the pour is being worked on. The downside is that you
will need to manually adjust the Standard Calendar so that the non-working
period co-incides with the Pour dates/times.

Personally I would just split the other Tasks and as long as the total hours
for each week are about right move on!

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see:
http://www.projectvbabook.com

If you proceed with the negative lag approach you will be in deep trouble
in no time and your plan will be an unreadable, untrackable, tangled mess.
This is not a solution but just a good way to compound existing problems.
Don't say you weren't warned.

Are you sure that you even have a problem?
Sure, you can prevent any task in the plan from looking as though it is
occurring at the same time as the pour by making it a FS0 predecessor.
But you can achieve the same objective by making a task a FS0 successor to
the pour.
Either way, it's (slightly) bad modeling unless the pour really cannot
start until the predecessors are finished, or, as successors, the tasks
really cannot start until the pour has finished.

Why not just schedule everything as soon as possible, and let some tasks
appear to be happening at the same time as the pour, and add a bit to the
duration estimate for those tasks to allow for the anticipated (but not
certain) interruption that will occur if the task is in progress when the
pour starts?

Making all tasks either (directly or indirectly) FS predecessors or FS
successors of the pour, to force a space for the pour to occur with
nothing else going on, is a good approach, quite rigorous, easy to
coordinate etc. But it will make a lot of tasks and the pour critical (or
at least soak up the float on all of the paths), when they might not
really have to be on the critical path. It will make your project longer
than it might otherwise be. But it may well be reasonable to trade-off a
bit of extra duration in exchange for a bit more clockwork coordination.
--
Trevor Rabey
0407213955
61 8 92727485
PERFECT PROJECT PLANNING
www.perfectproject.com.au





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