hberkis said:
We wish to add a 15% Mgmt (PMO type) fee to each project based on work and
NOT duration.
We tried to do this by creating a resource called management with a rate of
X dollars/hour, we then added this resource to the Project Summary line at
15%; This is over calculating our cost b/c lag time is being included in this
cost.
Is their anyway to perform this calculaton and make it dynamic? I am using
PWA w/ Project Pro 2003.
Thank you in advance for your help.
hberkis,
It's interesting that you could assign a resource to the Project Summary
Task because Project Pro 2003 won't let me do it. I can create my own
top level summary and assign a resource to it though. Is that perhaps
what you really did?
Generally it's not a good idea to assign resources to Summary Lines.
Project will let you do it (as noted above), but it can cause problems
(e.g. double billing depending on how resources are assigned).
I guess I don't understand why you say it over calculated the cost and
what's the part about "lag time"? If you mean that management hours are
added into the total Work hours then yes, that's the way it is supposed
to work. If a labor resource is assigned, there has to be hours
associated with the assignment based on the simple premise that "labor
works" (i.e. laborers do stuff).
I can't speak for all of industry but in my experience, management cost
is often rolled into either overhead or G & A (General and Accounting)
and those are rolled into the bid rates but not charged explicitly to
any given program. If a manager is "hands-on" for a particular project
then he/she should be assigned to a normal task. In the case of a PMO, I
believe it is quite common to have a separate file that plans and tracks
cost for Program Management. The task descriptions are very general and
basically span the entire program, quite often as an LOE (level of
effort), with perhaps a few discrete tasks for major reviews, contract
data items, etc.
However to answer you question. If you really want to use your 15%
method and do NOT want management to be a resource with Work hours then
here is a method you might try (Note: I didn't try this so this is just
off the top of my head). First, create a custom field in order to
perform a dynamic calculation on each performance task (i.e.
Cost1=[Work] x .15 x Mgmt rate). Roll up the custom cost field to
Summary Lines. At the top summary line use a Paste Link to link the
rolled up Cost1 field to the Fixed Cost field. Note: In my opinion this
would be a lot easier to do with VBA but the formula + link method
should get what I think you want.
Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP
