DATES/DURATIONS WRONG WHEN USING STANDARD/PROJECT CALENDARS

[Pat Lyden]

I start off with a standard calendar, then I need a 7 day;6 day; 11 days out
of 14;24hour; working times of 11 up to 24hours. The project gives either
wrong durations or wrong dates when I try to combine calendars.

 

[St Dilbert]

You're not giving a lot of detail to work on.
If we can basically agree on the following statements:
1. calendar options (Tools/options/Tab calendar) is the setting of
conversion factors on entry and viewing but won't change the schedule
2. there is always exactly one calendar associated with one project -
this is used to schedule when no other calendar is present
3. you can have more calendars for each resource and each task - both
types will "supersede" the scheduling of the project calendar, when you
have both resource and task calendars, project schedules when resource
AND task calendar show "working time"
4. duration is the measured in (active) working time only between
finish and start and thus can (and usually is) less than the elapsed
time between finish and start

Then my question would be what calendars are you trying to combine in
which way?

 

[Pat Lyden]

The type of projects that I plan for can have 3 work cycle times in the
overall project ie, engineering - standard 8:00 to 17:00, Site - 7 DAY
07:00 to 18:30 Offshore - 24hour/7 days.
It would seem that when the default is set to either one of the calendars it
distorts the duration or planned start finish dates for activities with
alternative calendars.

 

[St Dilbert]

So you use the standard and 24 hours calendars that come with project
and set up a new one "7day" (Mon-Sun 7:00 - 18:30).

I would set the project/project information/calendar to standard and
leave it there.

Now set the 24h(offshore) and 7day(site) as TASK calendars (task
information/tab advanced/calendar) for eacht task individually if
necessary.

In the planning stage you may not know the real staff assigned, but you
could create generic resources ("engineer", "welder") and make them
available full-time (resource information/tab working time/base
calendar 24h); make sure you have the cost rates entered per hour, not
per day.

When you assign those unlimited generic resources, your tasks should
schedule according to their task calendar (Site or offshore if chosen
in task information, with standard if "none" in task information).

That should give you the information you're looking for in overall
schedule and cost.

Now moving into detailed assignment you replace the generic resources
with real people, and you'll have to use the resource calendars and
replace one generic "24" hour engineer by assigning one "12h
nightshift" and one "12h dayshift" each. Project won't change schedule
or cost because in sum they still represent a "24h engineer". Going
into more detail and individual calendars ("engineer Johnny B") will
help you when you're in progress and want to see the effect of
individual off-times (Johnny B broke leg, non-working for the rest of
the week).

If you're using the calendars this way - what is the unexpected
behaviour?

Can you give examples that we can reproduce, say on a task (calendar a)
with x work, y duration, start s, finish f; task assignments z with
resource calendar b...

I know that's a lot of details, but then project simply has all those
parameters to play with...