Nine day week - Project 2007

[Nigel Davies]

A client requires a week comprising seven working days followed by two non
working days, repeated indefinitely (ie a nine day week). Any ideas? My best
effort is to make every day of the seven day week a working day then create
non working Exception days recurring at 8 day intervals. However this only
works for single non-working days and Project will not accept two adjacent
non-working Exception days, each recurring at 8 day intervals.
Advice appreciated!

 

[Steve House]

I'm really curious what industry uses such an unusual work schedule and why
they do it. It seems like the worker fatigue and psychological stress such
a schedule would likely generate would seriously erode productivity. In
fact, in most of the jurisidictions where I've lived and worked, such a
schedule would be a violation of wage and labour laws and regulations that
mandate at least one day off after an absolute maximum of six consecutive
work days, with a few very rare exceptions.

 

[JulieS]

Hello Nigel,

To chime in -- I can confirm what you report. As you have found it
is relatively easy to create the single non-working day which
repeats at x day intervals, but I am also unable to create the
additional repeating non-working day as part two of the 7 day on, 2
days off cycle.

I resorted to creating an exception ("Weekend") repeating every 9
days and then had to manually add the following day off as
individual (Non-repeating) exceptions. Not pretty --but it did
finally work.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information about Microsoft Project

 

[greg]

I would think firemen do something like this.
Strange for a workplan.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Steve,

Not a solution but just to mention an area where very harsh labour
conditions are "normal": workers on drilling platforms work in a practically
uninterrupted daily schedule for a month, then get a month off ashore...

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Steve House]

Firemen are often 24 on and 48 off or some such. 7 consecutive work days at
a time is grueling and IMHO gives rise to serious hidden costs in reduced
productivity and worker turnover that far outweigh any benefits to an
employer.

 

[Nigel Davies]

Hello Julie
Thank you for your relevant response to my question. It looks like this is
an issue Microsoft should address, then?
Best regards
Nigel Davies

 

[JulieS]

Hello Nigel,

I can't speak for Microsoft. However, in my opinion the inability
to create two recurring events such as you need is not expected. I
would expect that you can either create two events or better yet
create two sequential nonworking days and have them repeat.

Sorry I don't have a perfect answer. The manual intervention seemed
the only possible way.

Regards,
Julie