Resource leveling technique, how often you are using it and is it common practice?

9 days ago Like CommentFollow Flag More Ahmad Shihadeh, Osama Abdelmalik Arafat, PMP Certifeid, Primavera P6 like this 37 comments Jump to most recent comments

Follow Jan Jan van den Berg Yes, i use resource leveling technique regularly and i consider this common practice.

Regards Jan 7 days ago Like

Follow Andreas Andreas Andersson Do you mean the automatic leveling function in Primavera or the process of and in it's self.

in terms of the built in function i haven't met anyone who uses it. Most planners, including me, do it old school style. Ie. manually. 7 days ago Like

Follow Joe Joe Barros i don't use it,i try once never again it short the durations and on other activities increases to be able to level the resources,it is a mess 7 days ago Like1

Follow Lorenzo Lorenzo Lopez Fernandez I agree with previous comments. Resource leveling is inevitable do it to avoid overloading the resources and schedules.

But I do not advise to do it automatically, or Primavera or Project, or any other program. It is preferable to see the curves resource use and go leveling them. 7 days ago Like4

Follow Anthony Anthony Myers We use the automatic resource leveling function in Primavera on all of our refinery turnaround projects prior to start of execution and at least once at every update. We use 2 activity codes per activity and total float to prioritize our activities.

We have been using this process for 6 years at 7 refineries and have found it to be very beneficial. 6 days ago Like2

Follow Saju Saju Samuel when you load resource , cost , manpower, etc, it is based on your productivity and cost strategy based on BOQ. It is optimum and no need to level it again. It want to level, I suggest you to do it manually other than automatic leveling 6 days ago Like

Follow Lambert Lambert S. Saju - Do you have unlimited manpower per discipline? How can you level it manually if there are thousands of activities? 6 days ago Like

Follow Nicola Nicola Preto Interesting point of view Mr. Lambert, I'm working now in Algeri, for a important project. I have the same problem, i can't do it manually.. how i can define a correct procedure in primavera p6?

(i'd like to study better this program because i really want to work in USA one day. My actual level are good for italian planner, but if i compare myself with all of you i'm a very basic planner. Any suggest for a great book for improve my level?)

Best regards Nicola 6 days ago Like

Follow Saju Saju Samuel @Lambert, you have unlimited man power it doesn't mean that you have to put all company manpower in a particular project, Man power is based on the amount of work in that project /duration and the productivity of the company. Before loading manpower you must have some idea about manpower and productivity of each an every labor based on activity. " your duration and manpower is related'

Take only overloaded activities that showing above in histogram, correct it Manually 6 days ago Like2

Follow Lorenzo Lorenzo Lopez Fernandez It is clear that there is no single answer. Each type of project requires a different use. In general I do not like to use any automatic system. But I understand that when there are many activities no choice. My use of the manual leveling to large construction projects. I do not know its use in oil or gas. 6 days ago Like

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Mimoune Djouallah Anthony : Could you please explain more your methodology, how do you deal with soft links, do you use them at all, I read one of your contribution ( i can't remember which forum) that for resource leveling you use other software beside P6 ? 6 days ago Like

Follow Lambert Lambert S. @Saju - Maybe we are not in the same boat.... If you have available 100 welders in your pool, Then your schedule histogram shown an overloaded of 120 welders. Are you going to reduce it one by one even if there are thousands of activities? How many types of resources you are using? Friendly advice, Don't work with the computer let the computer works for you. 5 days ago Like2

Follow Muhanad Muhanad Fakhri, MSc, MBA @ Lambert:- You need to re-prioritize your activities to maintain your 100 welders peak, by shifting some activities and watching the accumulative hours at each point. Or, you could negotiate with the management to deploy more people, it happened to me in my current shutdown job where we required more scaffolders, 230 compared to 150 scaffolders in peak, and so we managed to get nearly 240 by requesting from other ongoing projects. 5 days ago Like2

Follow Lambert Lambert S. Muhanad please check the topic, we are discussing resource leveling 5 days ago Like

Follow Anthony Anthony Myers Mimoune: Most of the execution phase work in turnarounds and outages can be broken down into 3 phase. 1. Disassembly 2. Inspect and repair 3. Reassembly

We create 2 global activity codes 1. Activity Priority with values 1 - 9 2. Equipment Priority with values AA - ZZ

All disassembly activities have an Activity Priority less than 5. All inspect and repair activities have an Activity Priority of 5. All reassembly activities have an Activity Priority greater than 5.

Jobs with know repairs would have a 1 for disassembly, 5 for inspect and repair and 9 for reassembly. The repair activities get as much float as possible.

Jobs with no known repairs would have a 4 for disassembly, 5 for inspect and repair and 6 for reassembly.

We only use true logic. A must happen before B. Usually only 1 constraint date which is pull feed.

If we have several similar jobs that we need to sequence. Job 1 would receive the Equipment Priority AA. Job 2 AB, 3 AC etc.

If all else is equal we tell Primavera to then look at total float. The less float the higher the priority.

First criteria is Activity Priority, second is Equipment Priority and last is total float. We level within float.

Set your resource limit to allow for 25% overage, but when leveling try to keep most of the hours below the limit line. A small spike here are there should not be an issue. Large on long duration overallocation must be avoided.

Use you histogram to when leveling set at the smallest time scale you use. For turnarounds we use hours, for capital projects days.

When I review a schedule I teach to only have 1 activity without a predecessor and 1 without a successor. If there is more than 1 constraint data the reason must be noted in the activity note tab.

NO SOFT LINKS. EVER. TRUE LOGIC TIES ONLY. Soft links will override any benefits you would gain from leveling. 5 days ago Like5

Follow Jan Jan van den Berg Further to my initial post regarding resource leveling, and reading the contributions of other members of the group I would like to expand on resource leveling either manual or automatic by the software. As said before I use automatic resource leveling frequently, by every weekly update on all project in the portfolio. On the other hand I use inherently leveling planning technique, by using cascading tasks approach. Furthermore all the schedules need to by resourced by similar resources, properly prioritized, absolutely no loose ends are allowed and the labor estimate shall not be more out the say 5 10% otherwise the results are untrustworthy and hence useless. On authors website I have 2 articles on resource leveling. One on the basis of automatic leveling for resources and one other article on automatic resource leveling on limited floor space. The website is http://plannenvoornietplanners.net/ 5 days ago Like

Follow Anthony Anthony Myers As Jan van den Berg described, we too use leveling when we are resource constrained due to logistics, resource availablity or safety. Using these features gives us a more predictable turnover date. 5 days ago Like

Follow Mimoune Mimoune Djouallah I appreciate your detailed answers, i tried the automatic leveling but with a limited success, usually our main resources constraints is the availability of accommodation in remote areas, P6 will let you level using only one maximum value, or in our case the availability is not fixed, you may have 200 bed the first month then 250 the next one.

it would have been useful, if P6 have the options to set the limit using roles, and and the options to assign activities the split or non split attribute.

but the main reason that I use manual leveling is that going the automatic way will impose a whole different approach how you develop the schedule in the first place, like using only hard logic, I don't want really to step outside my comfort zone. 5 days ago Like

Follow Engr.Faiz Engr.Faiz Rasul (PMP) can anyone who ever talked about mannual levelling explain that are the main steps for mannual levelling? 5 days ago Like

Follow Muhanad Muhanad Fakhri, MSc, MBA @ Lambert: I understood the subject matter and I was talking about either manually leveling the resources (prioritizing and shifting activities) to maintain my peak manpower histogram, or negotiating my management to increase resource in case the situation is inevitable ... 5 days ago Like

Follow Muhanad Muhanad Fakhri, MSc, MBA @ Faiz: The way I used to follow in manual leveling is by watching my manpower mobilization plan, once we got the job we will prepare the schedule considering many factors, one of them is the manpower and equipment required to accomplish a certain amount of work, this has to be discussed with the management in light of the current manpower utilization across the projects portfolio and the possibility to recruit more in the long run in addition to the peak manpower requirements such as accommodation and logistics and space constraints. Once the manpower mobilization histogram is agreed then this has to be our guidelines in adjusting the schedule prior final submission for client approval. So we need to ensure that individual resources are not exceeding the required peak and hence the accumulative resources are not exceeding the total manpower peak. Manually i believe its hectic and time consuming but with experience and dedication the stress would be..somehow...affordable. :) 5 days ago Like1

Follow Engr.Faiz Engr.Faiz Rasul (PMP) Muhanad Fakhri,Suppose I am getting Overallocation in "Month X" so I shall filter Out the Activities of "MOnth X" and shift some of them to other months or increase durations to decrease the resource usage.Is this the approach when we talk about mannual levelling? 4 days ago Like1

Follow Lambert Lambert S. Good Question! 4 days ago Like

Follow Dave Dave Caldwell Faiz: Look at the histogram at the bottom of the page and then manually move or adjust durations so that your hours come down to an acceptable level. Anthony: That is a great explanation, thanks. 4 days ago Like

Follow Lambert Lambert S. @Dave - Considering restrictions for each relationship of every activity and talking thousands of activities especially critical items. I don't think your idea is advisable. It is possible if the over allocation is very minimal and considered hours only instead of detailed manpower with few activities only. 4 days ago Like

Follow Dave Dave Caldwell @Lambert - I am sure that you are right in your projects. I work typically on new facilities and I may have 50 to one hundred activities with the same resource working at any one time. The issue that I found were priorities change over the life cycle of a project. This made us go through and modifying the plan after an update and realistically after the initial resource leveling session the changes were minimal. 4 days ago Like

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Anthony Myers Each project type has its own idiosyncrasies. What works well in one environment may not work at all in another. Projects that I work with range in size from 2,000 to 40,000 activities. Time increments are in hours. We try to keep the execution phase of our project below 45 days working 7 days per week 24 hours per day. The nature of our beast mandates we utilize the power of the computer as much as possible. Prioritized leveling works well for us, but could well be overkill for projects under 100 activities with longer durations. The beauty of todays software is that it can be configured for different needs within the same organization. The only requirement is that the end user know how and when to take advantage of this power. 3 days ago Like

Follow Jan Jan van den Berg Mimoune I understand that you have tried and that automatic leveling has limited success. You noted that the the number of bed may are different every month. Note that you can specify the limit of number of resources, of any way you want in time and availability. So suggest to proceed as follows. Make an resource called. BEDS specify the number as 20000% for 200 beds in the time period. Then assign this resource to all activities. Go to the leveling tab and set only the resource BEDS for leveling . The activities shall now be leveled. Next step is to priorities the activities. Regards Jan 3 days ago Like

Follow Anthony Anthony Myers I do something similar, but would assign 1 bed per resource to each activity. You would then need to turn off level within float or you could have overallocations. 3 days ago Like

Follow Jan Jan van den Berg Anthony Yes, there are many other items to consider during leveling. Hope to have a reaction of Mimoune or any other members of the group. Feedback is also important. Regards Jan 3 days ago Like

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Mimoune Djouallah thanks, P6 let you define resource availability by period, that's good, but for leveling it use only one value, which is useless in my case. 3 days ago Like

Follow Muhanad Muhanad Fakhri, MSc, MBA Faiz you will have different combination of resources building up your histogram, not only one, you can use automatic leveling but you might have issues in overall duration and hence you might miss some milestones, If my resources are over allocated then I have two solutions, either to re-prioritize my activities and shift them, or discuss with my management to increase the pre-set peak. As we know, for example, excavating a trench using JCB with a prescribed productivity, assuming only 2 JCBs are available can not be challenged, when I update my schedule the balance work has to be done with available resources, i normally update the schedule and present the actual scenario to my management with delays expected and ways to recover including increment of resources or using the available float to re-prioritize, in severe cases a complete delay analysis and a recovery plan will follow when we exceed 5% slippage. 2 days ago Like

Follow Stijn Stijn Van de Vonder It's good to read that resource leveling functionality is used by some of you. But by all means, it is NOT common practice at all to level automatically. Very few of our clients use this functionality. Whether it is best practice is an other discussion. There exists a lot of academic research on what they call the RCPSP (resource constraint project scheduling problem). The algorithms in this research are far more powerful than the simple priority list-based heuristics in P6 and MSP. But the bottom line is that every algorithm struggles to model human decisions / priorities (there are just too many factors that impact decisions). For that reason, automatic leveling is a bridge too far for most people. 2 days ago Like

Follow David David Hulett, Ph.D. I review a lot of schedules for best practices, which includes not overloading limited resources. Even if resources are entered, i see no evidence that the automatic leveling capability of the scheduling software has been used. Most contractors say they address resource management in some other software, but then the question is: "How can we be sure that the schedule reflects what you had to do to manage resources?" I suspect that resource management is the reason I see so many Start-not-earlier-than constraints, since resource leveling is usually resource shifting.

Where I need to use the automatic resource leveling algorithms in the scheduling software is when I conduct a Monte Carlo simulation on the schedule, using risk drivers or 3-point estimates. There is just not enough time to level each of 3,000 iterations manually. Since manual leveling is usually more efficient than the algorithms, I believe that (1) at least the iterations are not violating resource constraints and (2) the simulation results may be more conservative than necessary. 1 day ago Like

Follow Osama Abdelmalik Osama Abdelmalik Arafat, PMP Certifeid, Primavera P6 I think at early stages of the project, automatic resources leveling is more efficient that manual, while at advanced stages of the project, manual leveling is more efficient. 1 day ago Like

Follow Jaco Jaco Stadler It would be interesting to see how does resource leveling add up in a Contract, most contract I have seen talks about Critical path (Logic and task) = EOT as such I believe the scehdule should tell you in order to achieve your early schedule you need x amount of resources, in Order to achive your late curve you need Y resources, I normally try to add in Lags and Increase duraton to level my early required resources. The reason EOT claim is impact is never based on a Contract that states reqource leveling, it always states CPM method. 10 hours ago Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate

Follow Joe Joe Barros i agree with Muhana Fakhri,the resource are allocated according to the scope of work,hours required to complete the project,priorities,commission dates or key dates,once this has been ascertain the program can be drawn the same as you build a house brick by brick,resources are allocated as required task by task taking into consideration that you program is not start steep and with over resourcing up front,if automatic resourcing is applied the program will increase or decrease task duration to level the resources, many times once the S curve has been drawn it is required to go back and readjust the plan to accommodate certain gapes but this has to be done the the project requirements in mind. therefore automatic resource leveling in my opinion is not a good option as the package does not know the project requirements