Project Progress% vs Activity % Complete
In order to get the overall percentage of a project, this needs
to roll up the activities’ percentage complete. Therefore, we need first to
know how to calculate the types of Activity % complete using one of the
following rules of credit wherever appropriate:
1-
Quantity or Units
Completed (Fit for Construction activities)
2-
Incremental Milestone (Fit
for Engineering and procurement)
3-
Subjective Judgment (Not
preferred unless no other option)
4-
Weighted or Equivalent
Units Completed
5-
Resource Expenditure (Level
of Effort)
Subsequently, we apply this on Primavera P6 using one of the
following types of Activity % complete:
1-
Duration% (Default, automatically
reflecting in EV and Remaining Duration)
2-
Physical% (Reflecting in
EV, but Remaining duration should be manually defined)
3-
Units% (For resource-driven
schedules, Resource Expenditure or Level of Effort)
To aggregate the overall percentage, the relative weight of
each activity should be defined. There are different approaches to do so as
follows:
1-
Activity Duration (duration
not always reflect the effort required)
2-
Activity Cost (depending on
maturity level if they link payments with progress or not)
3-
Activity Manhours/Resources
(preferred in construction as it reflects the relative effort)
4-
No. of activities (can be
helpful for similar types of submissions with similar effort required to prepare
each of them)
5-
Expert Judgement (Not
preferred unless no other option)
6-
Composite approach (can be
helpful for all aggregating all phases such as engineering, procurement and
construction with usage for the suitable approach in each of them)
Example of a composite approach:
The weights can be loaded using one of the resource types of
P6 which are:
1-
Labor resource: In this
case the units of weights will affect the total of labor units.
2-
Non-labor (Equipment)
resource: DITTO but for machinery. However, some practitioners use it in case
of not loading equipment on the schedule.
3-
Material resource: I prefer
it because normally we don’t need to know total of materials because they are
not in numbers, but in different units.
Accordingly, Primavera calculates the overall percent
complete based on earned valued which is called performance percentage in P6 vs
the planned percentage which is called schedule% in P6. This doesn’t work
unless the programme is cost loaded. Therefore, we sometimes multiply these weights%
by $1 million to convert them and load as cost. Furthermore, we should be aware
of the earned value calculation (Earned value = Percent complete * Budget cost):
Where BCWP is the Earned Value and BCWS is the Planned
Value. Likewise, the same can be calculated in percentages as follows:
1-
Performance% = Total earned
value / Total budget cost
2-
Schedule% = Total planned
value / Total budget cost
Finally, the schedule variance% can be calculated as well (SV%
= Performance% - Schedule%) to determine the status of the schedule whether
ahead or behind schedule.
