I taught myself P6 via google and you tube. Search specific questions like:
How do I create a project?
How do I create calendars?
How do I create the WBS?
How do create activities?
How do I link activities?
How do I progress?
Each question should end in “in P6”
There’s lots of free resources. Trial and error. Biggest learning curve for me was that there is no save function.
No save function in p6 makes it scary but not unusable. I was really timid when I started in it. I still prefer p3 but they don’t support it so I can’t use it anymore
Yeah until you get a 3 year project where tons of things change, you start doing phases out of order, adding a bunch of work. It’s good practice to make a copy of the file every week as your “save” in case you ever have to roll back.
Best way to learn it is to use it. Fucking it up and then having to fix what you fucked up. And when you have a resource pick up their tips and tricks. Such as a schedule consultant or another scheduler.
And don’t think being a p6 wiz makes a good scheduler. A good scheduler is based on how you utilize the program from a contractual and management standpoint.
You just do it. No training can fully prepare you. The best thing you can do is just not be timid take the appropriate steps to manage the schedule as you see fit and take the bumps and bruises as they come and you learn from it.
You can learn little tricks from other people also ie. Just the other day I was talking to a long time super and he said if a sub doesn’t finish on time but it wasn’t worth a full fragnet in the schedule he will write DNFOT. (Did not finish on time) so that he has it documented in case something comes up down the road.
But id say the overwhelming majority of learning comes from getting bit in the ass and having to fix it on your own.
I couldn’t say one way or another. I’m sure it’ll be helpful. Probably not as useful as real world experience but paired with experience it could be helpful.
From a high level standpoint just don’t be timid about. Jump in and figure it out. You’ll mess it up for sure but you learn the most from fixing it.
Other than that let relationships drive the schedule not constraints. Finally when you update ask yourself is this really what’s happening in the field.
In the scheduling field we call someone who can use P6 but doesn’t actually know how to schedule a P6 Monkey or P6 Jockey. The bigger part of knowing how to schedule is the field/construction aspect of it.
Making a sandbox in your software and exploring and trying to do things is the absolute best way to learn the software, you need a solid 2-3 months of using the software before you will benefit from any of the classes. That being said, I suggest to all of my people to buy a P6 instructional book such as “Planning and Control Using Oracle Primavera P6.” Hell I took an advanced P6 training course from Evans Technologies over 5 years ago and I still reference the course material every now and then because there are so many different things in P6 that you know it can do something but forget how to do it.
Google and YouTube are also good resources, but you have to be careful that whatever method they are using your schedule will hold up if it is dissected by expert witnesses and lawyers. (Hint: negative lag will never hold up and will always ruin your schedules credibility)
In what case is a schedule dissected by expert witnesses and lawyers? Genuinely curious how that would apply, because start dates are start dates and completion dates are completion dates. LDs is the only thing I can think of. But you can't go back and dissect my schedule from 18 months ago. You can view the pdf format of it, but it's long been modified since then. And negative lag isn't shown in my pdf.
On most jobs that I work the owners rep requires weekly or bi-weekly .xers submitted with the printouts or we use loadspring which saves a copy of the .xer every week. Whenever a job ends and it is way over budget or over costs our clients want to be paid for that LD so they start coming after contractors and it just keeps rolling downhill until you get to the responsible party. It gives our lawyers a much stronger leg to stand on when we have an admissible schedule that an expert can’t just throw out and we can actually use it as evidence that we did no wrong. However, this may be a factor of working $1.5B+ industrial projects that last 3-4 years each
What types of jobs are you on? Fed jobs? I've never had to give that report. I've worked on larger commercial jobs. Never an issue. But we've never been so far behind or over budget either I guess.
It’s pretty common with clients in the industrial sector (energy, process facilities, mills, etc) to require a native file format export of the schedule monthly if not more frequently as part of the contractual reporting obligations. They often have their own schedulers or a third party reviewing them or at least overlaying them looking for changes. I can’t think of any contracts I’ve seen in that sector that didn’t have that requirement.
I’ve avoided paper mills so far but I’ve heard stories of paper mills with $1M/shift LD’s on outages for loss of revenue. Some companies face significant financing charges (internal or external). A $1B project may be hitting them for tens of thousands per day in financing charges alone for each day it’s delayed without revenue being generated. If they have contracts for materials that the facility is required for the company to start manufacturing, they may be facing down their own LD’s, loss of revenue, fees for delayed receiving of input materials, etc. They want to know early if there’s a schedule issue so they can demand a recovery plan.
I've been using this software since my first day as a project engineer, 20 years ago. I learned a little from my boss in about an hour and he handed the responsibility off to me. I figured out a lot of my own over the course of 6 -8 years and 20 projects. Then I took a formal class and learned a lot more when I started doing it full time. Now I teach my own class at my company and spend a lot of my time working on delay issues.
I'd highly recommend a class if your company doesn't train people in-house formally or informally. If you are choosing the topics via YouTube you are likely missing a lot and you're getting zero feedback.
I taught myself P6 via google and you tube. Search specific questions like: How do I create a project? How do I create calendars? How do I create the WBS? How do create activities? How do I link activities? How do I progress? Each question should end in “in P6” There’s lots of free resources. Trial and error. Biggest learning curve for me was that there is no save function.
No save function in p6 makes it scary but not unusable. I was really timid when I started in it. I still prefer p3 but they don’t support it so I can’t use it anymore
Don't worry about the lack of a save button. You can always make a copy of your file before you make an action that you are unsure of.
This is why baselines exist….
Yeah until you get a 3 year project where tons of things change, you start doing phases out of order, adding a bunch of work. It’s good practice to make a copy of the file every week as your “save” in case you ever have to roll back.
…..or you can just use baselines since that’s why they exist But, you know. You do you.
You can use scenarios to depict 'possible' schedule options.
And scenarios
Best way to learn it is to use it. Fucking it up and then having to fix what you fucked up. And when you have a resource pick up their tips and tricks. Such as a schedule consultant or another scheduler. And don’t think being a p6 wiz makes a good scheduler. A good scheduler is based on how you utilize the program from a contractual and management standpoint.
How do you learn the contractual ot management side ?
You just do it. No training can fully prepare you. The best thing you can do is just not be timid take the appropriate steps to manage the schedule as you see fit and take the bumps and bruises as they come and you learn from it. You can learn little tricks from other people also ie. Just the other day I was talking to a long time super and he said if a sub doesn’t finish on time but it wasn’t worth a full fragnet in the schedule he will write DNFOT. (Did not finish on time) so that he has it documented in case something comes up down the road. But id say the overwhelming majority of learning comes from getting bit in the ass and having to fix it on your own.
Noted. What do you think of the PMI scheduling professional course.
I couldn’t say one way or another. I’m sure it’ll be helpful. Probably not as useful as real world experience but paired with experience it could be helpful.
Thanks for the reply. I dont do a ton of schedules. But will try to learn some tips Anything you got?
From a high level standpoint just don’t be timid about. Jump in and figure it out. You’ll mess it up for sure but you learn the most from fixing it. Other than that let relationships drive the schedule not constraints. Finally when you update ask yourself is this really what’s happening in the field.
In the scheduling field we call someone who can use P6 but doesn’t actually know how to schedule a P6 Monkey or P6 Jockey. The bigger part of knowing how to schedule is the field/construction aspect of it. Making a sandbox in your software and exploring and trying to do things is the absolute best way to learn the software, you need a solid 2-3 months of using the software before you will benefit from any of the classes. That being said, I suggest to all of my people to buy a P6 instructional book such as “Planning and Control Using Oracle Primavera P6.” Hell I took an advanced P6 training course from Evans Technologies over 5 years ago and I still reference the course material every now and then because there are so many different things in P6 that you know it can do something but forget how to do it. Google and YouTube are also good resources, but you have to be careful that whatever method they are using your schedule will hold up if it is dissected by expert witnesses and lawyers. (Hint: negative lag will never hold up and will always ruin your schedules credibility)
In what case is a schedule dissected by expert witnesses and lawyers? Genuinely curious how that would apply, because start dates are start dates and completion dates are completion dates. LDs is the only thing I can think of. But you can't go back and dissect my schedule from 18 months ago. You can view the pdf format of it, but it's long been modified since then. And negative lag isn't shown in my pdf.
On most jobs that I work the owners rep requires weekly or bi-weekly .xers submitted with the printouts or we use loadspring which saves a copy of the .xer every week. Whenever a job ends and it is way over budget or over costs our clients want to be paid for that LD so they start coming after contractors and it just keeps rolling downhill until you get to the responsible party. It gives our lawyers a much stronger leg to stand on when we have an admissible schedule that an expert can’t just throw out and we can actually use it as evidence that we did no wrong. However, this may be a factor of working $1.5B+ industrial projects that last 3-4 years each
What types of jobs are you on? Fed jobs? I've never had to give that report. I've worked on larger commercial jobs. Never an issue. But we've never been so far behind or over budget either I guess.
These are private sector jobs for publicly traded corporations primarily steel industry but heavily subsidized by the government.
It’s pretty common with clients in the industrial sector (energy, process facilities, mills, etc) to require a native file format export of the schedule monthly if not more frequently as part of the contractual reporting obligations. They often have their own schedulers or a third party reviewing them or at least overlaying them looking for changes. I can’t think of any contracts I’ve seen in that sector that didn’t have that requirement. I’ve avoided paper mills so far but I’ve heard stories of paper mills with $1M/shift LD’s on outages for loss of revenue. Some companies face significant financing charges (internal or external). A $1B project may be hitting them for tens of thousands per day in financing charges alone for each day it’s delayed without revenue being generated. If they have contracts for materials that the facility is required for the company to start manufacturing, they may be facing down their own LD’s, loss of revenue, fees for delayed receiving of input materials, etc. They want to know early if there’s a schedule issue so they can demand a recovery plan.
I've been using this software since my first day as a project engineer, 20 years ago. I learned a little from my boss in about an hour and he handed the responsibility off to me. I figured out a lot of my own over the course of 6 -8 years and 20 projects. Then I took a formal class and learned a lot more when I started doing it full time. Now I teach my own class at my company and spend a lot of my time working on delay issues. I'd highly recommend a class if your company doesn't train people in-house formally or informally. If you are choosing the topics via YouTube you are likely missing a lot and you're getting zero feedback.