monitoring actual work

[raduga_fb]

Hi all,

I am trying to monitor the actual quantities. Civil works have "Resource
Name" (EX, LC, RC, BF) and their amount has been entered to "Units". In order
to this, "Resource Names" become "EX[367]".

Task Information -> "Excavation" -> Resources ->
Resource Name = EX
Units = 367

I update actual data to Number1 column as "Actual Quantity".

Task Number1 Number2 % Resource
Name Actual Qty Complete Names
-------------- ---------- ------- --------- --------
ZZZ Civil Construction 3%
Excavation 43 11 11% EX[367]
Lean Concrete 0 0 0% LC[10]
RCC of Footing 0 0 0% RC[189]
Backfilling 0 0 0% BF[168]

to get % Actual Complete automatically I created formula in Number2

Custom Fields -> Number 2 -> int([Number1]/Mid(([Resource
Names]),4,Len([Resource Names])-4)*100)

I can not apply same method to "% Complete". "% Complete" is standard column
in the microsoft project and can not be changed (at least I could not). I
have to update "% Complete" column manualy. Do I have another option ?

Number2 column does satisfied me. But I have to define additional formula
for main task "ZZZ Civil Construction" to calculate total percentage of work
(3%). Microsoft Project calculates it automatically in the "% Complete"
column.

Finally, How can I update / monitor "Actual Quantities" in easy way ? I
don`t want to use calculator to update "% Complete" column.

Regards,

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

First of all you need to realize that % Complete does NOT refer to work or
units. % Complete is a measure of duration, a unit of time. % Work
Complete and % Physical complete are totally different, referring to work
performed (*not* the time over which it was done) and actual physical
progress respectively. If we have a task schedule to take 10 days and we
have worked on it for 3 days, it is 30% Complete. If we *should* have
worked on it 5 days as of today but only did 3 days because the resource
assigned called in ill for 2 days, it is still 30% Complete. Here's an
example of all three in action. We have a walkway to pave that is 100
metres long. We expect it to take 10 days. We have assigned our resource
to work on it 2 hours per day for the first week and 8 hours per day for the
second week. We have just completed day 5 of our schedule and find 40
metres of walkway is in place but nothing at all has been done on the
remaining 60 metres. We are at 50% Complete, 10mh/50mh or 20% Work
Complete, and 40% Physical Complete.

"Units," if you're referring to resource units as it appears from your post,
is not work either. When you assign your resource EX with 367 units in your
example, that means that EX is a (very large) group of people and you have
367 of them assigned to work together on the task, generating 367 man-days
of work for each individual working day of duration. 1 unit working for 1
8-hour day performs 8 man-hours. 2 units working together for 1 8-hour day
OR 1 unit working for 2 8-hour days results in a total of 16 man-hours of
work. Units indicate the RATE at which work is performed while Work is the
AMOUNT of work to be done.

When you say you're trying to monitor "actual quantities" it sounds like
you're trying to track Actual Work. Why reinvent the wheel? You already
have an Actual Work field there as standard equipment, why not use it?
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi all,

I am trying to monitor the actual quantities. Civil works have "Resource
Name" (EX, LC, RC, BF) and their amount has been entered to "Units". In
order
to this, "Resource Names" become "EX[367]".

Task Information -> "Excavation" -> Resources ->
Resource Name = EX
Units = 367

I update actual data to Number1 column as "Actual Quantity".

Task Number1 Number2 % Resource
Name Actual Qty Complete Names
-------------- ---------- ------- --------- --------
ZZZ Civil Construction 3%
Excavation 43 11 11% EX[367]
Lean Concrete 0 0 0% LC[10]
RCC of Footing 0 0 0% RC[189]
Backfilling 0 0 0% BF[168]

to get % Actual Complete automatically I created formula in Number2

Custom Fields -> Number 2 -> int([Number1]/Mid(([Resource
Names]),4,Len([Resource Names])-4)*100)

I can not apply same method to "% Complete". "% Complete" is standard
column
in the microsoft project and can not be changed (at least I could not). I
have to update "% Complete" column manualy. Do I have another option ?

Number2 column does satisfied me. But I have to define additional formula
for main task "ZZZ Civil Construction" to calculate total percentage of
work
(3%). Microsoft Project calculates it automatically in the "% Complete"
column.

Finally, How can I update / monitor "Actual Quantities" in easy way ? I
don`t want to use calculator to update "% Complete" column.

Regards,

 

[yuraloon]

Hi all,

I am trying to monitor the actual quantities. Civil works have "Resource
Name" (EX, LC, RC, BF) and their amount has been entered to "Units". In order
to this, "Resource Names" become "EX[367]".

Task Information -> "Excavation" -> Resources ->
Resource Name = EX
Units = 367

I update actual data to Number1 column as "Actual Quantity".

Task Number1 Number2 % Resource
Name Actual Qty Complete Names
-------------- ---------- ------- --------- --------
ZZZ Civil Construction 3%
Excavation 43 11 11% EX[367]
Lean Concrete 0 0 0% LC[10]
RCC of Footing 0 0 0% RC[189]
Backfilling 0 0 0% BF[168]

to get % Actual Complete automatically I created formula in Number2

Custom Fields -> Number 2 -> int([Number1]/Mid(([Resource
Names]),4,Len([Resource Names])-4)*100)

I can not apply same method to "% Complete". "% Complete" is standard column
in the microsoft project and can not be changed (at least I could not). I
have to update "% Complete" column manualy. Do I have another option ?

Number2 column does satisfied me. But I have to define additional formula
for main task "ZZZ Civil Construction" to calculate total percentage of work
(3%). Microsoft Project calculates it automatically in the "% Complete"
column.

Finally, How can I update / monitor "Actual Quantities" in easy way ? I
don`t want to use calculator to update "% Complete" column.

Regards,

 

[yuraloon]

Dear Steve,

It seems to me that it is legitimate to want to track "units" of work as
opposed to Manhours of resources. I think this example is quite similar to
one I need to track in a very different industry. I need to monitor clinical
trail data which is tracked and funded by patient in/ patient out. If I
anticipate 100 patients in a trial and I expect all 100 to be entered and
processed by 1/1/05. The resources doing the testing are not really a big
concern to me since they are a flat cost. But I pay per unit processed.
I know that MS project does not track this type of progress but if one were
to try to do it - what would be the most straightforward way within Project?

Yuraloon

First of all you need to realize that % Complete does NOT refer to work or
units. % Complete is a measure of duration, a unit of time. % Work
Complete and % Physical complete are totally different, referring to work
performed (*not* the time over which it was done) and actual physical
progress respectively. If we have a task schedule to take 10 days and we
have worked on it for 3 days, it is 30% Complete. If we *should* have
worked on it 5 days as of today but only did 3 days because the resource
assigned called in ill for 2 days, it is still 30% Complete. Here's an
example of all three in action. We have a walkway to pave that is 100
metres long. We expect it to take 10 days. We have assigned our resource
to work on it 2 hours per day for the first week and 8 hours per day for the
second week. We have just completed day 5 of our schedule and find 40
metres of walkway is in place but nothing at all has been done on the
remaining 60 metres. We are at 50% Complete, 10mh/50mh or 20% Work
Complete, and 40% Physical Complete.

"Units," if you're referring to resource units as it appears from your post,
is not work either. When you assign your resource EX with 367 units in your
example, that means that EX is a (very large) group of people and you have
367 of them assigned to work together on the task, generating 367 man-days
of work for each individual working day of duration. 1 unit working for 1
8-hour day performs 8 man-hours. 2 units working together for 1 8-hour day
OR 1 unit working for 2 8-hour days results in a total of 16 man-hours of
work. Units indicate the RATE at which work is performed while Work is the
AMOUNT of work to be done.

When you say you're trying to monitor "actual quantities" it sounds like
you're trying to track Actual Work. Why reinvent the wheel? You already
have an Actual Work field there as standard equipment, why not use it?
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi all,

I am trying to monitor the actual quantities. Civil works have "Resource
Name" (EX, LC, RC, BF) and their amount has been entered to "Units". In
order
to this, "Resource Names" become "EX[367]".

Task Information -> "Excavation" -> Resources ->
Resource Name = EX
Units = 367

I update actual data to Number1 column as "Actual Quantity".

Task Number1 Number2 % Resource
Name Actual Qty Complete Names
-------------- ---------- ------- --------- --------
ZZZ Civil Construction 3%
Excavation 43 11 11% EX[367]
Lean Concrete 0 0 0% LC[10]
RCC of Footing 0 0 0% RC[189]
Backfilling 0 0 0% BF[168]

to get % Actual Complete automatically I created formula in Number2

Custom Fields -> Number 2 -> int([Number1]/Mid(([Resource
Names]),4,Len([Resource Names])-4)*100)

I can not apply same method to "% Complete". "% Complete" is standard
column
in the microsoft project and can not be changed (at least I could not). I
have to update "% Complete" column manualy. Do I have another option ?

Number2 column does satisfied me. But I have to define additional formula
for main task "ZZZ Civil Construction" to calculate total percentage of
work
(3%). Microsoft Project calculates it automatically in the "% Complete"
column.

Finally, How can I update / monitor "Actual Quantities" in easy way ? I
don`t want to use calculator to update "% Complete" column.

Regards,

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

I'm not sure that Project is the best tool to use for that type of scenario
because your focus seems to be other than the work schedule of the
resources, the activities the resources engage in, and the cost of
performing the work. Your focus seems to be how many patients have been
entered by some point in time, ie, the number of deliverables completed by
such and such a date. As such it seems to me that your "unit" is a
deliverable. A fundamental metric in Project is time, not the raw number of
deliverables - that's why the Gantt chart scale is a calendar. But a
deliverable does not have a time dimension, although the work producing it
certainly does.

Projects are a set of tasks that create a set deliverables but not the set
of deliverables themselves - the deliverables are the result of the project
but are not THE project if you follow the distinction. Tasks are, in turn,
a physically observable activity performed by a resource or resources
expending work over a quantifiable period of time. They have a specific
beginning and ending dates and require a certain amount of work to complete.
Work is what the resource cost portion of your budget is paying for.
Project's role in this is a tool for you to use to figure out how to deploy
those resources so the right people are in the right place at the right time
to perform the work necessary to create your deliverables by their required
delivery dates.

In Project, milestones often mark the completion of a key deliverable, a
state transition that occurs at a single point in time, and as such have
zero duration and zero work associated with them. It sounds like you're
trying to track a completion checklist of a series of milestones without any
actual project, in terms of the list of concrete activities that create
them, being associated with them.

You might be able to kludge together something to track deliverables per se
in Project but why spend the effort to force a square peg down a round hole?
Excel seems like a much more straighforward tool to use for this sort of
endeavor.

Hope this helps give some ideas ...
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Dear Steve,

It seems to me that it is legitimate to want to track "units" of work as
opposed to Manhours of resources. I think this example is quite similar to
one I need to track in a very different industry. I need to monitor
clinical
trail data which is tracked and funded by patient in/ patient out. If I
anticipate 100 patients in a trial and I expect all 100 to be entered and
processed by 1/1/05. The resources doing the testing are not really a big
concern to me since they are a flat cost. But I pay per unit processed.
I know that MS project does not track this type of progress but if one
were
to try to do it - what would be the most straightforward way within
Project?

Yuraloon

First of all you need to realize that % Complete does NOT refer to work
or
units. % Complete is a measure of duration, a unit of time. % Work
Complete and % Physical complete are totally different, referring to work
performed (*not* the time over which it was done) and actual physical
progress respectively. If we have a task schedule to take 10 days and we
have worked on it for 3 days, it is 30% Complete. If we *should* have
worked on it 5 days as of today but only did 3 days because the resource
assigned called in ill for 2 days, it is still 30% Complete. Here's an
example of all three in action. We have a walkway to pave that is 100
metres long. We expect it to take 10 days. We have assigned our
resource
to work on it 2 hours per day for the first week and 8 hours per day for
the
second week. We have just completed day 5 of our schedule and find 40
metres of walkway is in place but nothing at all has been done on the
remaining 60 metres. We are at 50% Complete, 10mh/50mh or 20% Work
Complete, and 40% Physical Complete.

"Units," if you're referring to resource units as it appears from your
post,
is not work either. When you assign your resource EX with 367 units in
your
example, that means that EX is a (very large) group of people and you
have
367 of them assigned to work together on the task, generating 367
man-days
of work for each individual working day of duration. 1 unit working for
1
8-hour day performs 8 man-hours. 2 units working together for 1 8-hour
day
OR 1 unit working for 2 8-hour days results in a total of 16 man-hours of
work. Units indicate the RATE at which work is performed while Work is
the
AMOUNT of work to be done.

When you say you're trying to monitor "actual quantities" it sounds like
you're trying to track Actual Work. Why reinvent the wheel? You already
have an Actual Work field there as standard equipment, why not use it?
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi all,

I am trying to monitor the actual quantities. Civil works have
"Resource
Name" (EX, LC, RC, BF) and their amount has been entered to "Units". In
order
to this, "Resource Names" become "EX[367]".

Task Information -> "Excavation" -> Resources ->
Resource Name = EX
Units = 367

I update actual data to Number1 column as "Actual Quantity".

Task Number1 Number2 % Resource
Name Actual Qty Complete Names
-------------- ---------- ------- --------- --------
ZZZ Civil Construction 3%
Excavation 43 11 11% EX[367]
Lean Concrete 0 0 0% LC[10]
RCC of Footing 0 0 0% RC[189]
Backfilling 0 0 0% BF[168]

to get % Actual Complete automatically I created formula in Number2

Custom Fields -> Number 2 -> int([Number1]/Mid(([Resource
Names]),4,Len([Resource Names])-4)*100)

I can not apply same method to "% Complete". "% Complete" is standard
column
in the microsoft project and can not be changed (at least I could not).
I
have to update "% Complete" column manualy. Do I have another option ?

Number2 column does satisfied me. But I have to define additional
formula
for main task "ZZZ Civil Construction" to calculate total percentage of
work
(3%). Microsoft Project calculates it automatically in the "% Complete"
column.

Finally, How can I update / monitor "Actual Quantities" in easy way ? I
don`t want to use calculator to update "% Complete" column.

Regards,

 

[yuraloon]

Well, that is the same conclusion we have come to here. Excel will be the
software we use. However I do want to make one further point and that is the
projects we monitor contain all the same concepts that PMBOK does. There are
tasks that have work and durations - they begin and end - they are planned
and there is actuality. (They have resources but we are not so interested in
them since they are outsourced and are a fixed cost - but for the sake of
argument, we could treat resources traditionally). Milestones are noted,
deliverables delivered. But in addition to all of that is the concept that
individual units march thru a subset of tasks. One patient went through
"Recruit patients" then went through "Test efficacy". Their progress and
numbers have an effect on task completion, cost and % complete. It is a
different way of looking at project work but most often if a way to look at a
production line. Thank you for you consideration of the problem.

Yuraloon

I'm not sure that Project is the best tool to use for that type of scenario
because your focus seems to be other than the work schedule of the
resources, the activities the resources engage in, and the cost of
performing the work. Your focus seems to be how many patients have been
entered by some point in time, ie, the number of deliverables completed by
such and such a date. As such it seems to me that your "unit" is a
deliverable. A fundamental metric in Project is time, not the raw number of
deliverables - that's why the Gantt chart scale is a calendar. But a
deliverable does not have a time dimension, although the work producing it
certainly does.

Projects are a set of tasks that create a set deliverables but not the set
of deliverables themselves - the deliverables are the result of the project
but are not THE project if you follow the distinction. Tasks are, in turn,
a physically observable activity performed by a resource or resources
expending work over a quantifiable period of time. They have a specific
beginning and ending dates and require a certain amount of work to complete.
Work is what the resource cost portion of your budget is paying for.
Project's role in this is a tool for you to use to figure out how to deploy
those resources so the right people are in the right place at the right time
to perform the work necessary to create your deliverables by their required
delivery dates.

In Project, milestones often mark the completion of a key deliverable, a
state transition that occurs at a single point in time, and as such have
zero duration and zero work associated with them. It sounds like you're
trying to track a completion checklist of a series of milestones without any
actual project, in terms of the list of concrete activities that create
them, being associated with them.

You might be able to kludge together something to track deliverables per se
in Project but why spend the effort to force a square peg down a round hole?
Excel seems like a much more straighforward tool to use for this sort of
endeavor.

Hope this helps give some ideas ...
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Dear Steve,

It seems to me that it is legitimate to want to track "units" of work as
opposed to Manhours of resources. I think this example is quite similar to
one I need to track in a very different industry. I need to monitor
clinical
trail data which is tracked and funded by patient in/ patient out. If I
anticipate 100 patients in a trial and I expect all 100 to be entered and
processed by 1/1/05. The resources doing the testing are not really a big
concern to me since they are a flat cost. But I pay per unit processed.
I know that MS project does not track this type of progress but if one
were
to try to do it - what would be the most straightforward way within
Project?

Yuraloon

First of all you need to realize that % Complete does NOT refer to work
or
units. % Complete is a measure of duration, a unit of time. % Work
Complete and % Physical complete are totally different, referring to work
performed (*not* the time over which it was done) and actual physical
progress respectively. If we have a task schedule to take 10 days and we
have worked on it for 3 days, it is 30% Complete. If we *should* have
worked on it 5 days as of today but only did 3 days because the resource
assigned called in ill for 2 days, it is still 30% Complete. Here's an
example of all three in action. We have a walkway to pave that is 100
metres long. We expect it to take 10 days. We have assigned our
resource
to work on it 2 hours per day for the first week and 8 hours per day for
the
second week. We have just completed day 5 of our schedule and find 40
metres of walkway is in place but nothing at all has been done on the
remaining 60 metres. We are at 50% Complete, 10mh/50mh or 20% Work
Complete, and 40% Physical Complete.

"Units," if you're referring to resource units as it appears from your
post,
is not work either. When you assign your resource EX with 367 units in
your
example, that means that EX is a (very large) group of people and you
have
367 of them assigned to work together on the task, generating 367
man-days
of work for each individual working day of duration. 1 unit working for
1
8-hour day performs 8 man-hours. 2 units working together for 1 8-hour
day
OR 1 unit working for 2 8-hour days results in a total of 16 man-hours of
work. Units indicate the RATE at which work is performed while Work is
the
AMOUNT of work to be done.

When you say you're trying to monitor "actual quantities" it sounds like
you're trying to track Actual Work. Why reinvent the wheel? You already
have an Actual Work field there as standard equipment, why not use it?
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


Hi all,

I am trying to monitor the actual quantities. Civil works have
"Resource
Name" (EX, LC, RC, BF) and their amount has been entered to "Units". In
order
to this, "Resource Names" become "EX[367]".

Task Information -> "Excavation" -> Resources ->
Resource Name = EX
Units = 367

I update actual data to Number1 column as "Actual Quantity".

Task Number1 Number2 % Resource
Name Actual Qty Complete Names
-------------- ---------- ------- --------- --------
ZZZ Civil Construction 3%
Excavation 43 11 11% EX[367]
Lean Concrete 0 0 0% LC[10]
RCC of Footing 0 0 0% RC[189]
Backfilling 0 0 0% BF[168]

to get % Actual Complete automatically I created formula in Number2

Custom Fields -> Number 2 -> int([Number1]/Mid(([Resource
Names]),4,Len([Resource Names])-4)*100)

I can not apply same method to "% Complete". "% Complete" is standard
column
in the microsoft project and can not be changed (at least I could not).
I
have to update "% Complete" column manualy. Do I have another option ?

Number2 column does satisfied me. But I have to define additional
formula
for main task "ZZZ Civil Construction" to calculate total percentage of
work
(3%). Microsoft Project calculates it automatically in the "% Complete"
column.

Finally, How can I update / monitor "Actual Quantities" in easy way ? I
don`t want to use calculator to update "% Complete" column.

Regards,

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Yes, actually I agree with your observations of the number of units
processed are certainly related to the progress on the project. I was
simply going on the information you provided in your posts which
de-emphasized the task and resource deployment nature of the plan to focus
on the number of deliverables completed (at least as I read it).

With 100 patients, the plan might consist of 100 summary tasks, each of
which contains as subtasks the full set of tasks necessary to process each
patient through the experimental protocol from start to finish. That is
actually how I would set it up. The number of tasks in progress at any point
in time would depend on the resources available. The overall progess would
be a weighted average of the progress of the individual patients through the
system, something the Project Summary Task would show easily. The problem I
see is conceptual - the project is not necessarily 50% complete when 50% of
the patients have been through the process from start to finish. We could
just as easily say the project is 50% complete because all the patients are
halfway through the process even though none of them have actually completed
it yet.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Well, that is the same conclusion we have come to here. Excel will be the
software we use. However I do want to make one further point and that is
the
projects we monitor contain all the same concepts that PMBOK does. There
are
tasks that have work and durations - they begin and end - they are planned
and there is actuality. (They have resources but we are not so interested
in
them since they are outsourced and are a fixed cost - but for the sake of
argument, we could treat resources traditionally). Milestones are noted,
deliverables delivered. But in addition to all of that is the concept that
individual units march thru a subset of tasks. One patient went through
"Recruit patients" then went through "Test efficacy". Their progress and
numbers have an effect on task completion, cost and % complete. It is a
different way of looking at project work but most often if a way to look
at a
production line. Thank you for you consideration of the problem.

Yuraloon

I'm not sure that Project is the best tool to use for that type of
scenario
because your focus seems to be other than the work schedule of the
resources, the activities the resources engage in, and the cost of
performing the work. Your focus seems to be how many patients have been
entered by some point in time, ie, the number of deliverables completed
by
such and such a date. As such it seems to me that your "unit" is a
deliverable. A fundamental metric in Project is time, not the raw number
of
deliverables - that's why the Gantt chart scale is a calendar. But a
deliverable does not have a time dimension, although the work producing
it
certainly does.

Projects are a set of tasks that create a set deliverables but not the
set
of deliverables themselves - the deliverables are the result of the
project
but are not THE project if you follow the distinction. Tasks are, in
turn,
a physically observable activity performed by a resource or resources
expending work over a quantifiable period of time. They have a specific
beginning and ending dates and require a certain amount of work to
complete.
Work is what the resource cost portion of your budget is paying for.
Project's role in this is a tool for you to use to figure out how to
deploy
those resources so the right people are in the right place at the right
time
to perform the work necessary to create your deliverables by their
required
delivery dates.

In Project, milestones often mark the completion of a key deliverable, a
state transition that occurs at a single point in time, and as such have
zero duration and zero work associated with them. It sounds like you're
trying to track a completion checklist of a series of milestones without
any
actual project, in terms of the list of concrete activities that create
them, being associated with them.

You might be able to kludge together something to track deliverables per
se
in Project but why spend the effort to force a square peg down a round
hole?
Excel seems like a much more straighforward tool to use for this sort of
endeavor.

Hope this helps give some ideas ...
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"(e-mail address removed)_SPAM"
<[email protected]>
wrote in message

Dear Steve,

It seems to me that it is legitimate to want to track "units" of work
as
opposed to Manhours of resources. I think this example is quite similar
to
one I need to track in a very different industry. I need to monitor
clinical
trail data which is tracked and funded by patient in/ patient out. If I
anticipate 100 patients in a trial and I expect all 100 to be entered
and
processed by 1/1/05. The resources doing the testing are not really a
big
concern to me since they are a flat cost. But I pay per unit processed.
I know that MS project does not track this type of progress but if one
were
to try to do it - what would be the most straightforward way within
Project?

Yuraloon

:

First of all you need to realize that % Complete does NOT refer to
work
or
units. % Complete is a measure of duration, a unit of time. % Work
Complete and % Physical complete are totally different, referring to
work
performed (*not* the time over which it was done) and actual physical
progress respectively. If we have a task schedule to take 10 days and
we
have worked on it for 3 days, it is 30% Complete. If we *should* have
worked on it 5 days as of today but only did 3 days because the
resource
assigned called in ill for 2 days, it is still 30% Complete. Here's
an
example of all three in action. We have a walkway to pave that is 100
metres long. We expect it to take 10 days. We have assigned our
resource
to work on it 2 hours per day for the first week and 8 hours per day
for
the
second week. We have just completed day 5 of our schedule and find 40
metres of walkway is in place but nothing at all has been done on the
remaining 60 metres. We are at 50% Complete, 10mh/50mh or 20% Work
Complete, and 40% Physical Complete.

"Units," if you're referring to resource units as it appears from your
post,
is not work either. When you assign your resource EX with 367 units
in
your
example, that means that EX is a (very large) group of people and you
have
367 of them assigned to work together on the task, generating 367
man-days
of work for each individual working day of duration. 1 unit working
for
1
8-hour day performs 8 man-hours. 2 units working together for 1
8-hour
day
OR 1 unit working for 2 8-hour days results in a total of 16 man-hours
of
work. Units indicate the RATE at which work is performed while Work
is
the
AMOUNT of work to be done.

When you say you're trying to monitor "actual quantities" it sounds
like
you're trying to track Actual Work. Why reinvent the wheel? You
already
have an Actual Work field there as standard equipment, why not use it?
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


Hi all,

I am trying to monitor the actual quantities. Civil works have
"Resource
Name" (EX, LC, RC, BF) and their amount has been entered to "Units".
In
order
to this, "Resource Names" become "EX[367]".

Task Information -> "Excavation" -> Resources ->
Resource Name = EX
Units = 367

I update actual data to Number1 column as "Actual Quantity".

Task Number1 Number2 % Resource
Name Actual Qty Complete Names
-------------- ---------- ------- --------- --------
ZZZ Civil Construction 3%
Excavation 43 11 11% EX[367]
Lean Concrete 0 0 0% LC[10]
RCC of Footing 0 0 0% RC[189]
Backfilling 0 0 0% BF[168]

to get % Actual Complete automatically I created formula in Number2

Custom Fields -> Number 2 -> int([Number1]/Mid(([Resource
Names]),4,Len([Resource Names])-4)*100)

I can not apply same method to "% Complete". "% Complete" is
standard
column
in the microsoft project and can not be changed (at least I could
not).
I
have to update "% Complete" column manualy. Do I have another option
?

Number2 column does satisfied me. But I have to define additional
formula
for main task "ZZZ Civil Construction" to calculate total percentage
of
work
(3%). Microsoft Project calculates it automatically in the "%
Complete"
column.

Finally, How can I update / monitor "Actual Quantities" in easy way
? I
don`t want to use calculator to update "% Complete" column.

Regards,