PowerPoint

AI Wizardry: Mastering the Tools

slide deck
Week – 21 Primavera title
Risk Analysis
Project Tool

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Primavera Risk Analysis

• Starting a new plan.

• Entering tasks and milestones.
• Adding summary tasks.
• Adding logic to define task relationships.
• Creating and assigning resources.
• Looking at project cost
• Identifying and resolving resource over demand.
• Printing a Gantt Chart.
• Saving a plan.
Primavera Risk Analysis

• First, we will set the scene.

• Don't worry if it seems like an exam, the answers are next!
• The small project we are going to consider is landscaping a
garden.

• It is Friday 13th July 2023 - do not worry that this is in the past, all
the things you will learn will still be totally relevant. And because
this project has already finished, we can tell you that the project
came in early, well within budget and everyone got a huge pay
rise - so your typical project really !!!
Primavera Risk Analysis

• Mr. House wants to landscape his garden. He designed the layout

last winter and is happy with it. He wants to erect a fence, put in a
pond and lay a path.
• He needs the work finished in two weeks because he has entered
the Best Gardens competition. The competition is on the 28th July.
• Mr. House used to be a landscape gardener but has decided he
wants to bring in laborers to do most of the work. He only knows
two laborers that can be employed at short notice. They can start
on Monday the 17th July and a rate of $30 per day has been
agreed on.
• Mr. House has $850 available for the project.
Primavera Risk Analysis

• He has decided to use Primavera Risk Analysis to create a project plan

so he can see whether the project can be finished on time and how
much it will cost.
• Mr. House has identified his project aims but before using Primavera Risk
Analysis he has to consider:
• What tasks must be done.
• When the tasks take place in relation to each other.
• What resources the project needs.
• It is 14th July 2023
• Mr. House has completed his project preparation and is now ready to
use Primavera Risk Analysis.
• You will see the decisions he has made as you follow the workshop.
Starting a new plan

• File | New
• Choose the "New Plan" template and click Open.
• Plan | Plan Information.
• Enter 'Garden Landscaping' in the Plan Title.
• Click on the Dates tab.
• Change the Plan Start Date to 15/07/23.
• Change the Data Date to 15/07/23.
• Click on OK to exit the dialog box.
Entering tasks

• A task is an element in a plan that involves doing something and

which takes time.
• Mr. House has broken his project down into 17 tasks. The first step
is to enter these into Primavera Risk Analysis.
• Enter the project tasks by following the steps below.
• Select the first cell under the Description column and type the task
description.
• Press the down arrow key on the keyboard.
• Continue until all the tasks below are entered:
Creating milestones

• Milestones are used in the project plan to mark important dates or

events.
• Some of the tasks you have entered are actually milestones. Creating a
task is the first step in creating a milestone.
• There are two types of milestone:
• A start milestone represents the start of a series of tasks.
• A finish milestone represents the finish of a series of tasks.
• Change the tasks 'Start project' and 'Ready for competition" to
milestones by following the steps .
• Click on the task description 'Start Project' to display its details in the Task
Details dialog.
• Click on the General tab.
• Change the Type to Start Milestone.
• Click on the task description 'Ready for competition' and change the Type to
Finish Milestone.
Changing the remaining duration

• The remaining duration is the amount of time needed to

complete a task. When a task starts and progresses, its remaining
duration decreases.
• Changing the remaining duration using the keyboard
• In the column Remaining Duration click in the cell of the task you want to
change.
• Type in the required value.
• Press the down arrow key to move to the next cell
Adding Summary tasks

• A summary task is a task that takes on the duration of the tasks

that are demoted under it.
• They can be used to represent sub-projects, project phases or
WBS structure.
• Summary tasks organize your plan making it easier to view.
• You can see that Mr. House has broken down his plan into three
summary tasks:
• 1. FENCE
2. GARDEN PATH
3. GARDEN POND
Changing the Standard Calendar

• Click on the calendar button on the tool bar

• You should see the Standard calendar is selected.
• Click on Workweek...
• Check the boxes for 'Saturday' and 'Sunday' to mark them as
working.
• Click OK.
• Click OK again to close Calendar dialog.
Adding logic to define task relationships

• 1. Move the mouse to the end of the "Buy fence materials" task bar
- you must move the mouse past the duration symbol until it
changes to F-?

• 2. Click and drag the F-? mouse pointer to the start of the "Dig
post holes" task bar. The mouse pointer should change to F-S.

• 3. Release the mouse button and the link is added.

Viewing the Precedence Network

• View | View | Insert View...

• Select 'Pert Network: Standard'
• Check the 'Insert View as New Sheet' check box.
• Click OK and a new sheet is added to the plan that contains the
Precedence Network.
Creating Resources

• Plan | Resources, or use the

resource button on the tool bar
• Type the ID of the resource in the
first free cell under ID.
• Enter the Description.
• Continue until all the resources are
entered.
Assigning a calendar to a resource

• The laborers are not available on the weekends. We can take

account of this by creating and assigning a calendar with
Saturday and Sunday as non-working to the resource LABORER.

• Any tasks that are then assigned the resource LABORER will not be
able to take place on the weekends.

• Create a new calendar with weekends as non-working

• Close Resource Setup dialog.
• Click on the calendar button on the tool bar
• Click on the New Calendar button.
Assigning a calendar to a resource

• Type in 'Weekends off' as the new calendar name.

• Select 'Standard' as the Copy of calendar choice.
• Click OK and the new calendar is displayed.
• Click Workweek...
• Uncheck 'Saturday' and 'Sunday' and hit OK.
• Click OK. The weekend for the calendar is now nonworking.
• Assign 'Weekends off' to the resource LABORER
• Click on OK to exit calendar dialog box.
• Click on the resource button on the tool bar
• Click in the cell in the Calendar column that corresponds to the
resource 'LABORER'.
• Choose the 'Weekends off' calendar.
Assigning a cost to a resource

• The cost of a resource is accrued every time a unit of resource is used by a task. The number
of resource units used by a task depends on the loading of the resource, the number of
resource units assigned and the task duration.
• Examples
• How cost is accrued for a task with a normal loading
• In this tutorial we will be assigning one unit of the resource LABORER to the task 'Put up posts'.
• As the resource LABORER has a normal loading, one unit of the resource will be used every
day.
• 'Put up posts' has a duration of 3 days. Therefore it will use 3 units of the resource LABORER. So
at a cost of $30 per unit the total cost will be $90.
• How cost is accrued for a task with a spread loading
• In our tutorial we will be assigning one unit of the resource PAINT to the task 'buy paint'.
• As the resource PAINT has a spread loading only one unit is used regardless of the task
duration.
• 'Buy paint' will therefore use one unit of the resource paint. So at a cost of $30 per unit the
total cost will be $30.
Assigning a cost to a resource

• Follow the steps below to enter the costs for the resources in Mr. House's project.
• Select the cell under Cost that corresponds to the resource you wish to add a cost
to.
• Type in the costs shown below.
• FENCE=$100
• FISH=$20
• LABORER=$30
• PAINT=$30
• SAND=$20
• SLABS=$100
• Assigning a supply to a resource
• The supply defines how many units of resource are available at any one time.
• The materials have an infinite supply because Mr. House can go to the shops and
buy more. On the other hand the supply of laborers is limited because Mr. House
only knows two laborers that he can employ for the project.
 • Follow the steps below to change the supply
of LABORER to 2
Assigning a cost to a • Select the cell under Supply that corresponds
to the supply of the LABORER.
resource
• Type in a value of 2.
• The resource setup should now look like this:
. Assigning resources to tasks

• In the Task Details select the Resources tab.

• Select the first free cell below ID.
• Select the resource you want to assign.
• Select the cell below Units/Period.
• Type in the required amount of resource units.
• Continue until all tasks have their required resources.
• Save the plan.
. Identifying resource overdemand
Leveling resources to resolve overdemand
Looking at the project cost

• Insert a column and totals line to display the task costs

• Locate and highlight the column Cost [Remaining] in the Left
Columns tab.
• Check Total this column.
• Check Show Total Line.
• Click on OK to return to the plan.
• Use the mouse to click and drag the splitter bar to the right (see
diagram below). This moves the Gantt Chart and reveals the new
column.
• Your plan should now look something like this:
Adjusting the plan

• We have identified two problems with Mr. House's project plan:

• 1. The plan does not finish on time when the resources are leveled. Remember the
Best Gardens competition is on the 28th July!

• 2. The budget is exceeded.

• Mr. House tries to kill two birds with one stone. He wants to see the effect of taking
the laborer off the 'line pond' task and doing it himself.

• Remove the LABORER resource assigned to 'Line pond' by following the steps below
• Select the task 'Line pond'.
• In the Task Details click on the Resources tab
• Click on the LABORER.
• Press delete key on the keyboard.
• Now the plan is adjusted a quick look at the totals line tells you that the
estimated project cost is now $840 and therefore just within the project
budget.

• But before we can start cheering we need to see if the project now
finishes on time when the resources are leveled

• Reset the tasks back to their earliest starts and level the plan
• Plan | Level Resources.
• The option Reset all the tasks to their early start dates should be already
checked - if not check it now. This ensures that the results of our
previous resource level are reset before we level again.
• Click Level Now button.
• Your plan should now look like this:
Printing

• To demonstrate how easy it is to print reports using Primavera Risk

Analysis we will print out the Gantt Chart for Mr. House's plan. We
will keep it short as you are probably ready for a break.
• Print out the project Gantt Chart
• File | Page Setup.
• Under the Scaling options check that Fit to 1 pages wide is
selected.
• Click OK.
• File | Print. Click on the Print button.
• It's as simple as that!
Entering uncertainty Workshop-2

• Start Primavera Risk Analysis.

• Help | Open Samples...
• Find and select "Risk Tutorial 1.plan". Click Open.
• Entering uncertainty using the Task Details dialog
• Right click on the task "Recover Roof"
• Select Duration Risk from the pop up menu. This displays the task
details dialog with the Duration Uncertainty tab selected.
Entering uncertainty Workshop-2

• Check On and a triangular distribution is assigned as the default.

• A triangular distribution requires a minimum, maximum and most
likely duration.

• For the "Recover Roof" task enter a minimum duration of 8 days,

most likely of 10 days and a maximum duration of 20 days
 Entering
uncertainty
using the Gantt
Chart columns
Task existence risk

• Enter a 20% chance of discovering wasp nests

• Right click on the task "Wasp Nests Found".
• Select Existence Risk from the pop up menu.
• Check the On check box.
• Against Probability this task exists enter a value of 20.
• Choose the option: Keep Links to other tasks.
• You will see the 20% value appear in the column Task Existence %.
You could change or enter the value using this column.
• Save the plan.
Running the Risk Analysis

• Risk | Run Risk Analysis.

• Make sure Show Step through analysis option is on.
• Set number of iterations to 1000 (it may already be 1000).
• Click Analyze and a dialog will appear with Step, Go, Complete
and Cancel buttons.
• Drag the dialog out of the way of the Gantt Chart so you can see
the tasks.
• Now click the Step button.
Interpreting the results

• What date can I be 80% confident of finishing by?

• This is very easy. All you do is look at the right hand vertical axis
and find 80% and read the date next to it - it's as simple as that.

• If you click on the 80% date in the right hand vertical axis a line is
drawn that hits the curve and then goes vertically down to the
same date.

• In our project there is an 80% chance of finishing before the 20th

May - There may be a variation in your results as this is a
statistical process.
Interpreting the results

• So why is this the 80% date?

• Find the approximate position of the 80% date on the horizontal axis.

• You will notice that the majority of the hits are to the left of this date. In
fact 80% of the hits are to the left and 20% are to the right. So during the
analysis 80% of the finish dates were on or before the 20th May and 20%
of the finish dates were after the 20th May. You can therefore say there
is an 80% chance of the finish date being on or before the 20th May.

• The accuracy of this statistic is of course dependent on having entered

sensible information into your plan in the first place!!

• So now onto our next question:

Interpreting the results

• What is the chance of finishing on the 8th May?

• To answer the question above read down the right hand vertical axis until you
find the required date or a date is earlier. Then read the associated percentage.
• In this case the chance of finishing on the 8th May is about 20%!!
• This is a fairly low chance. This is how many projects are run when risk and
uncertainty is not consider - i.e. it is assumed that because the planning
software shows an end date of the 8th May then this is the date the project is
likely to finish by. But you have seen that this is not always the case. In fact you
have seen there is only a 22% chance of finishing by the 8th May.

• So if this was your project plan you would now have some very useful
information about the date you are likely to finish your project.

• One of the things that makes a project risky is the number of tasks that run in
parallel. With tasks in parallel it only takes one to be late and the project is late
but all the parallel tasks must be early for the plan to be early.
Criticality Index

• Format | Columns.
• In Grouped Fields tab locate and select the column ‘Risk Output –
Criticality Index’ under Risk Outputs.
• Add it to the Right Columns tab by selecting the Right Columns tab and
pressing the > button.
• Use the Up and Down buttons to move your new column to the desired
location and click OK.
•
• You will notice it has been filled with values that vary from 0% to 100%
(before the analysis they were all 0%).
• The Criticality Index tells you how often a task was on the critical path
during the risk analysis. The reason tasks can sometimes be on the
critical path and sometimes not is because during the risk analysis the
task durations vary and this can alter the critical path. You will have
seen the critical path change if you watched the tasks during the step
through analysis.
Criticality Index

• The interesting thing about the criticality index is that it helps you identify those
tasks that are most likely to be critical during the project.
• To make a bit more sense of this report we will sort the tasks by criticality.
• View | Sort...
• Select 'Criticality'
• Click Apply.
• Click Close.
• The tasks should now be sorted in order of criticality. Tasks with the same
criticality are sorted by start date.
• The tasks that have 100% criticality are most likely to be on the critical path
during the project and they therefore should be given the most attention.
• Edit | Undo sort.
This will undo the sort by criticality you have just applied. There are multiple
levels of undo and redo should you need them.
•
Thank You!

All trademarks / copyrights of other companies are respected and are properties of those companies.”