Material vs Work

[Steph]

I am trying to track my project with something other than cost or hours(time)
For example, I would like to keep track of some of my material in feet. Is
this possible or am I completely off? Please help.

Thank you,
Stephanie

 

[Ian Coletti, PMP]

Hi Steph,

Can you give an example of what you're trying to do? Are you attempting to
track cost at all? If not, you may have to create a custom field (like a
number field). I use material resources to track equipment (for example) for
earned value reporting. The resource "Type" is Material, the "Std. Rate" is
the cost per piece of equipment. When I assign the "resource" or equipment
to the task, I say 1 unit per task. I validate that the total units used in
the schedule is no more than I have assigned to the schedule (and more
importantly in stock . However, if you use the same technique, you could
use x number of units when assigning for the number of feet or square feet
and then have the "Std. Rate" equal to the cost per foot or square foot.

For example, you create a resource named "Hardwood flooring." The "Std.
Rate" is $6.00 (you don't have to put a /foot or /hour at the end). When you
assign "Hardwood flooring" to the "Install Hardwood Floors" task at say 500
units (symbolizing 500 square feet of flooring), you'll get a total task cost
of 500 units of "Hardwood Flooring" at $3,000.

For a more advanced approach, you may be installing a lot of flooring over a
longer period of time. You can use the same approach, but make sure the
resource "Accrual" is set up for "Prorated" if you want to track cost of
flooring over a number of weeks. You can use a task Usage view to split up
the # of units being installed on a given week.

Sorry if I'm babbling... can you tell it's the holidays?

Best of luck!

Ian

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

You can track material consumption in P2000 or later. In the resource
sheet, enter the item as a material resource (set resource type to
"material" instead of "work"). Enter the unit of measure in the Material
Label column (ie, "feet") and the cost per unit in the Std Rate column.
When you assign resources to a task, enter the estimated material
consumption in the units column right along with the work resources ...

Name Units
Bill Carpenter... 100%
Joe Carpenter... 100%
Lumber ............500 feet

note: all you have to enter is the number, Project will supply the units
based on the material label entry

You can also enter consumption as a rate, ie, electricity 500kw/hour, if
that is more accurate and Project will multiply your entry by the task
duration to compute the total consumption.

The cost of that resource will be included in the task cost and you can use
the usage views to get both the number of feet and the cost per task and
total usage and costs of that resource. The timephased side of the usage
views will show you resource consumption over time.

As far as tracking progress by materials consumed, that seems a pretty hazy
concept to me. The primary concerns are almost always about whether you're
on time and within budget. The number of feet of lumber used out of the
total expected to be used without regard to the status date doesn't give you
any information about either of those primary managment problems that can
make or break a business.