Lot production schedule which identifies the Numbers of Lots Released over time?

[TroyB]

Hi,

I'm working on an Urban Development Program in MS Project 2000. Basically
we are Civil Engineers who design subdivisions of large landholdings for
developers. We subdivide the land into smaller lots in stages. Each stage
has a construction start and finish date, cost and number of lots released.
It is important for the Developer to have a particular number of lots
available for sale each year.



Using the Gantt Chart and the Entry: Table, my project header looks like
this;

ID, Task Name, Duration, Start (Date), Finish (Date), Construction Cost ($),
Lots Serviced (No), Lots Released (No), Predecessor



I've added fields such as "Lots Serviced" and "Lots Released" as Number 1
and Number 2 Customised Fields. Among other things, i would like to produce
a lot production schedule which identifies the Numbers of Lots Released over
time. I've tried to create a report or use "Analyze timescaled Data in
Excel" to generate what i require.



How do I produce a lot production schedule which identifies the Numbers of
Lots Released over time.



Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Troy

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

I'm wondering if Project is the best solution to this aspect of your
scheduling. A "lot released" is really not a task. Instead it is a
deliverable. Tasks in a Project schedule represent activity done by a
resource over an observable time frame. All of the things you need to do to
get a lot released - surveying the property, registering the deeds,
obtaining needed permits, etc - would be tasks but "lot released" would be
the consequence of the set of actions, not an action in and of itself. In
your project schedule I'd expect to see a summary task for each plot that is
being subdivided, a sub-summary task for each individual lot or group of
lots if that's how you do it, and a separate set of activities taking place
over a specific time frame for each of those summary tasks - Mary goes to
the county clerk's office on Tuesday at 9am to register the deed for lots
X15 East, X15 West, and X32 South and she'll be gone for 3 hours, for
example. If some of the actions needed to release a lot can be done
simultaneously for a larger grouping of lots, that just introduces a summary
task level in between the two already mentioned. With that kind of
structure, where the start and completion of the preparation for each
individual lot and group of lots is known, you could then filter for date
ranges and determine the number of lots to be completed within that range.
To get the totals in any arbitrary range, you need to track in the smallest
increment of activity that lots are processed in with a set of tasks for
each unit.

Wouldn't it be easier just to enter your information straight into Excel as
a table using the column definitions you've listed, filter the table based
on start>desired date and/or finish<desired date, then subtotal the
resulting subset for lots serviced and lots released? Even if you could
somehow kludge your lots released into timescaled data in Project (which I
doubt) the fact that we released 120 lots in the first half of 2005 doesn't
mean they were distributed evenly over the 6 month period at a rate of 20 a
month. Simply knowing that 120 were released in the first 6 months doesn't
let me pro-rate into smaller time divisions and conclude 60 were released in
the first quarter. It could just as easily be that all 120 were released in
one lump on June 30.

 

[TroyB]

Thank you for your response Steve.

I was kinda hoping that MS Project had a function (or method) that provided
a "deliverable" output shedule. The "Lots Released" field is associated with
a particular task (Clearance of Titles) and that's where i am trying to
derive the report (or output) information (or using the summary task
associated with that particular stage).

I could complete what i require in Excel, however i prefer to use Project
for sheduling the contributing tasks associated with the Development process
(as you mention). In that case i'm using two applications to provide output
information common to contributing inputs, which is undesirable.

I'm going to persue trying to use Project as you've mentioned.

Thanks again.

Troy

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