Question

P6 Start & Finish. When i show the time in the start and finish column i get a lot of activities that have finish times at different times throughout the day.

I know that P6 calculates to the minute but if i have set up my workdays to be 7 to 5 or whatever why do i still get activities that finish say at 10 AM. I would like if possible all activites to start at 7 AM and finish at 5 PM. Then the next activity to start at 7AM the next day as an example. Not some starting at 10AM and some finishing at 2PM. It scares me that I may be losing time on the job due to some setting on P6 i haven't done correctly. Has anyone else experienced this? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

It's all down to the activity calendar vs the Admin Preferences. P6 classifies a day as whichever duration (in hours) has been assigned under Admin Preferences(Usually it is 8 hrs). If you have an activity calendar running from 7 til 5 (assuming you have a 1 hr lunch break, then it is 9 hrs), when you enter a duration as 1 day, it will spread the duration from Admin Preferences (in this case 8 hrs). That means your start time will be 7am, and your finish time will be 4 pm, not 5. If you have a successor of 1 day's duration, then again, it will assign 1 hr from 4pm until 5pm, and then spread 7 hrs into the following day, giving you a finish time of 3pm, etc etc. This is why you'll get different finish times in activities.

I have taken to entering durations in hours, which ensures i keep durations at a manageable level.

Have a check on the durarion at Admin level and see what it is set at. Chances are it set at a default level, so it may be worth investigating the reasoning behind the value

Answer 2

it starts with your calendar assignment. use a project calendar and change your time time setting to suit, i.e. hours per day, hours per week, hours per month, hours per year.... the reason you are experiencing different time per activity level is because primavera is calculating it at your default calendar (customarily at 8hrs/day) where in fact you changed it to 10hrs/day (which is your project calendar).