MS Project Resource Calendar

I guess what's driving me nuts is when I have a task that needs to be completed in two days. I assign a Trade resource, based on a 7 hr/day calendar and a Engineer resource based on an 8 hr/day calendar. I make my trade resource work 14h and my engineer resource work 16h. I would think the duration would be 2d since a day is 8h and the resource is using 16 hours but it changes to 2.13 days.

Sounds like I'm missing a very basic concept and need to do more homework on this, or, the program is very confusing. I hope it is the former. Hard to explain the schedule when I don't understand exactly what it is showing.

mgerbasioHBT,

One thing you do understand for sure and that is that Project is very confusing. It is not intuitive nor easy to learn without some help (i.e. training).

Since both Dale and I replied, I'll let Dale go ahead and continue helping you on this one and I'll go work a VBA issue with another user.

John

Dale,

Thanks so much for the help. This task is installing and checkout some electrical equipment for two days, a total of 14 hours of work time for the electrician but 16 hours of work time for our project engineer. The electrician is using the Trades calendar based on a 7h workday and the project engineer is using the standard calendar based on a 8h workday. I'd like to see my costs properly reflected as well as the project durations and I can't seem to get this to work. Maybe I just don't understand what I think I understand on how MS Project calculates these values.

I believe I have the base calendar set properly. Resource Information, General Tab, Change Work Time, Base Calendar "Trades".

As for the task form, I see task duration which I set to 1 day (that's one 8h project day). Under resource name I select my resource name,  units=100% and work=1d. I press OK and it changes work to 8h; this should stay at 7h.

I was expecting to see the task duration of 1d stay as a project day (8h) and the resource would stay as a trade day (7h).

mgerbasioHBT,

The problem is that Project only allows one definition for a "day", "week" and "month". So you aren't necessarily doing anything wrong, you just need to adjust your thinking about the Duration field.

The easiest way to work around Project's Duration field limitation is to use hours as the units for duration. Cost shouldn't be affected since that is normally expressed as an hourly rate anyway and in fact internally Project calculates cost values using $/minute. For example, let's say you have a resource whose rate is $60/hr and that resource is assigned full time to a task that lasts 45 minutes. You will see the cost is $45.

If showing duration in days is important to you, you could create a custom field that translates durations into days based on the task calendar. For example, in the following test file I created a custom calendar for 6 hour days. I used that calendar as the task calendar for task f. I then created a custom field to display duration in days using the following formula:

Text1=IIf([Task Calendar]="CustomCalendar(6h)",[Duration]/360,[Duration]/480) & " days"

Hope this helps.

John

mgerbasioHBT --

Did you assign the Trades calendar as the Base Calendar for the resources who work the Trades schedule?  If not, that is your first step to do.

Your second step is to remove the Trades calendar from tasks.  This step is not necessary if you do the first step I have detailed above.

Third, when you assign resources to tasks, use the following method:

1. Select a task in the Gantt Chart view.
2. Right-click anywhere in the Gantt Chart pane and select the Show Split item on the shortcut menu.
3. In the Task Form pane, select the name of the trades resource, enter a Units value for the resource (indicating whether the resource will work full-time or part-time), and then enter a Work value for the resource.
4. In the Task Form pane, click the OK button to make the assignment.

When Microsoft Project calculates the Duration for the task, the Duration will be calculated using 8 hours as the work day.  Do not fret, as the schedule for the task will be calculated correctly using 7 hour work days.

To see the correct schedule, apply the Task Usage view.  For trades resources assigned to tasks, you should see the Work value in the timephased grid shows 7 hours/day (assuming the resource is assigned to work full-time).

Keep in mind that Microsoft Project calculates all Duration values using the Hours Per Day setting on the Schedule page of the Project Options dialog.  The default value is 8 hours, which is why your Duration values did not correspond with the schedule of the trades tasks.  But the schedule is correct, which is all that matters.  Hope this helps.