Physical Percent Complete in Primavera P6

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Physical Percent Complete inPrimavera P6the Missing Guide

July 5, 2012 ByNader Khorrami Rad24 Comments

There are three different methods of calculating the actual progress ofactivities:Duration Percent Complete,Units Percent Complete,and PhysicalPercent Complete. The first two are explained in the previous articles andthis article will cover the last one, Physical % Complete.

We will also discuss the ways of choosing the appropriate percent completefield in later articles, and will now focus on the nature and calculations only.

The Concept of Physical Progress

The progress of some activities is not measured appropriately by the meansof duration or units. In such cases, we use the concept of physical progress.

The physical progress of an activity is a manually-entered value determined

by the user. The value can be based on either of these two:

On physical parameters that are not applicable inside the planthe amountof concrete poured, the length of the pipes laid down, and the number oflight bulbs installed, are examples of this kind. You can always useresources to implement these parameters, but they are not usually the onlyassignment (you also have human resource assignments, equipmentassignments, etc.) and in such cases, theUnits % Completewill becalculated based on a combination of the main parameter and all otherassignments of the activity, which is not your desired result. So, you can

measure this kind of progress by resource units and Units % Complete, onlywhen that resource is the only one assigned to the activity. Otherwise,
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implementing these parameters will not be easy in an automated system andentering them manually is usually preferred.

On expert judgement based on the physical progress of the final product orresultsometimes the physical parameters (as described before) are notsuitable basis for progress measurement and expert judgement is preferred.

Either way, physical progress is determined outside the schedule.

Two Types of Physical Progress inPrimavera P6

There are two methods of dealing with physical values in Primavera P6:

Entering them manually; this is the default method and is done by entering

whatever you wish in the Physical % Complete field of the activity.

Using Activity Steps; this is done by selecting predefined manual values.

These two types are explained below.

Using Activity Steps

One of the measurement methods, also described in the Earned ValueManagement for determining the earned value, is using activity steps.Imagine an activity: designing the foundation of the equipment xyz.

Its common for the progress of activities related to designto follow stepsinstead of incremental values; for example:

0%for not-started activities and those that are not completed and issued yet 80%for the completion and the first issue of the design 100%for the approved design

So we will have the following progress curve for the sample activity:


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The first issue and the approval in this sample are usually called ActivitySteps, or Progress Steps. One way of implementing this method is to limitourselves to only entering these values; e.g. do not enter any physicalprogress before the design is issued. By the time we issue the design, wecan enter 80% as the physical progress and again, we wont increase it untilit is approved, which makes our physical progress 100%.

Primavera P6 has a feature which makes this kind of progressing easier. Wecan define the activity steps and use them for entering progress and thus toupdate Physical % Complete on the activitiy. This will prevent us frommaking mistakes by automatically limiting us to the predefined values.

The first thing to do is to get the settings right or specifically the setting whichenables progress via activity steps.

1) Click on the Projects item of the Enterprise menu to open the Projectswindow.
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2) After selecting the project in the upper part of the window, the Activitypercent complete based on activity stepsoption should be activated toenable the activity steps. From now on, you cannot enter manual physical %complete values for the activities which have defined steps. However, its stillpossible to enter manual values for activities which do not have steps. So,dont worry too much about this setting; you can always keep it active.

The next thing to do is to define steps for the activities. The following screenshows a plan with two activities.


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The activity A1is selected. The settings we will deal with are in the StepsTabof the Details pane. If you dont have the pane, select View| Show onBottom| Details. If you dont have the Steps tab, right click on a tab andselect Customize Activity Details then activate the Steps item.

Now, it is time to define steps. Our sample steps are 80% progress for the

first issue and the remaining 20% for the approval.

3) To add a new step, click on the Add button(bottom-left corner of thescreen).


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4) Enter the name of the step and repeat clicking on the Add button andentering the names for the rest of the steps.


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Now the two sample steps have been entered. These steps have the sameweight now; each will increase Physical % Complete by 50%.

5) In order to define other weights, right click on the Step Name heading (or

any other headings) and selectCustomize Step Columns. By this, a dialogbox opens and theStep Weightcolumn can be added to the layout.


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6) Now predefined progress of each step can be entered in the Step Weightcolumn as shown.


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Now we are finished defining the steps for activity A1.

You might have many activities with the same steps. In this case, select allsteps of activity A1 (click on a step, then press Ctrl+A keys to select all),then right click on a blank space of the steps pane and select CreateTemplate. By this, the following dialog box appears:

Enter a desired name (General Design Steps in this sample) and click on

the OK button. Now a saved template for these steps is created andavailable for further use.


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Now lets select activity A2.

7) This activity is supposed to have the same steps as activity A1. We canuse the previously made template to create them. Click on the Add From

Template button and the following dialog box will appear.


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8) Double click on the General Design Steps item to continue.


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The same steps are added to the activity.

Entering Physical % Complete

1) The first thing is to select the activity, go to the Status tab of the Details

pane, check the Started checkbox, and mark the activity as started. Thismeans that the activity is started and ready to receive its physical progress.


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2) In this example, the activity A3 is marked as started. This activity does nothave steps, so the Physical % Complete can be entered manually. Simplyclick on the cell and enter the value.


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For those activities which have steps (A1 and A2 in this sample), you cannotenter manual values and should use the steps instead (only if you haveactivated the steps as described in the beginning of this very article). Inorder to do so, go to the Steps tab of the Details pane after marking the

activity as started. Just check the Completedcheckboxes of the completedsteps.


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Physical % Complete for WBS Elements

WBS elements usually roll-up the information of their underlying activities;e.g. the cost of a WBS element is the sum of the costs of its children and itsStart is equal to the minimum of the starts of its children. The way each

value is rolled-up depends on the type and nature of the value and evensome of them do not accept roll-ups by their nature. ThePhysical %Completeis one of those fields that arenot rolled-up, because its basedon external parameters, unknown to the software, and there is no way ofequalizing them and providing a summarization.

The thing you should have in mind is that you are not supposed to useactivity percent completes for the WBS elements, even if they have rolled-upvalues (like Duration % Complete and Units % Complete). The suitable fieldfor this purpose is Performance % Complete which will be discussed in laterarticles.


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Summary

The concept of the Physical % Complete is straightforward. Its a way ofentering manual progresses based on expert judgment or other externalfactors. These values can be dynamically determined in each control periodor follow a predefined set of values (activity steps).

One last thing you should have in mind is that the planned progress, which isprovided by theSchedule % Completeand planned value fields, does notincorporate steps and is based on dates and units (seeSchedule %Complete articlefor more information). This can cause some amounts offalse variation between your actual progress and planned progress. Thesevariations are usually too little to be taken into consideration. But if youbelieve they are large for your project or you want to be as precise aspossible, you should avoid activity steps and decompose the activity into

more simple activities which are possible to be tracked based on duration orunits.

Final Note

An interesting use of Physical % Complete is that you can have appropriateGlobal Changes in place, which calculate progresses and put them in thefield. Suppose you have more than one resource assigned to each activityand are supposed to use one of them for the progress. An appropriateGlobal Change can calculate the value automatically and enter it in the field.

Another example is when you need aDuration Percent Completesimilar tothat of Microsoft Project, which is based on the At Completion Durationinstead of Original Duration. You can have another Global Change tocalculate this value and present it as Physical % Complete.
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Physical Percent Complete in Primavera P6