What’s new in Primavera P6 Professional? We published an article, about the recently added Check Schedule Report tool in Primavera P6 Professional version 22.
Figure 1: Check Schedule Report in Primavera P6 Professional
An additional feature was added to supplement these check schedule parameters as a filter in the Activities Window. This is handy because it will show the activities that fail to meet the target metric in the activity table and Gantt chart. The full Check Schedule Tool produces a separate text report that only lists the activities that don’t meet the target assessments. The text report makes it difficult to visualize the activities in the project.
P6 Project Schedule Optimization
Figure 2 shows an example of the text Check Schedule Report shows the percentage of activities that fail to meet the target in the Check Summary portion of the report. The first item Logic, analyzes the project and identifies activities that do not have either a predecessor or successor relationship. In order to see the 3 activities that are open ended, you would need to expand the detailed portion of the report under Logic to see the 3 activity’s IDs and names.
Figure 2: Check Schedule sample report in Primavera P6 Professional
If you prefer to visually see the activities in the P6 window instead, then you can use the convenient check schedule filters. Please note these are not the same as the Filter tool used in P6 to customize layouts.
The report parameters need to be defined in the full Check Schedule Report tool. You can learn how to set each assessment in this article. Once the targets are set, you can easily activate the check schedule filters from View on the Menu Bar.
Figure 3 below shows the steps to activate the Check Schedule filter for Logic.
- On the Menu Bar, click View
- Click Check Schedule to expand the menu.
- Click Logic.
Figure 3: Check Schedule Filters in Primavera P6 Professional
The Activities Window in Figure 4 now shows the 3 activities that were missing either a predecessor or successor in this sample project. For other analysis, you can easily select the other items in the Check Schedule menu. The Activities Window will update to show the activities that fail to meet the respective Targets from the report.
Figure 4: Check Schedule results for Logic assessment in Primavera P6 Professional
Drawbacks of using the Check Schedule Filters
Notice the Filter heading still shows ‘All Activities’ indicating the activities removed from the screen is not from a traditional Primavera P6 filter. This area on the screen normally shows which layout filters are activated. However, it does not change and shows ‘All Activities’ are on the screen even though quite a few activities are missing in the table. Unfortunately, there is currently no visual indication on the screen that shows which Check Schedule filter is being used.
Another problem is there is no way to clear the Check Schedule filter to show all of the activities again in the project. Opening a new layout will not reset the screen to show all activities in the project. The only way for the screen to go back to normal is to close the project and then opening it again.
Hopefully, a future update of Primavera will fix these inconveniences.
Check Schedule Thresholds
One other option available in the Check Schedule menu is the Check Schedule Thresholds. This is a shortcut menu that allows you to adjust the threshold parameters for Long Lags, Large Float and Large Duration activities in hours. These items are normally set in the full Check Schedule Report accessed from Tools on the Menu Bar. Now there is a convenient way to quickly change these thresholds and view the adjustments for the project analysis.
Figure 5: Check Schedule Thresholds in Primavera P6 Professional
Learn how to run the Check Schedule Report from this article, Using the Check Schedule Report Parameters in P6 Professional to Improve Project Health
If you want a more detailed explanation for each assessment in the Check Schedule Report, this article Primavera P6 EPPM Web Access ‘Check Schedule’ Tool explains each parameter.
Conclusion
Primavera P6 is still a great tool for project schedule optimization. The Check Schedule Report analyzes industry best practices and guidelines to help project managers, schedulers and controllers with qualitative and quantitative evaluations to monitor the health of their projects. The additional ability to select each of the assessments as a ‘filter’ makes it convenient to easily see which activities fail to meet the target parameters in the Primavera Activities Window. Now P6 users do not have to cross reference the text report to identify the problem activities.
Hopefully the couple of inconveniences we noticed about using these Check Schedule filters will be fixed in a future P6 version or update.
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