Resource Grouping

[Bruce]

How do I schedule a series of tasks for a single resource that will happen
serially together. For example, say I want an electrician to do 4 different
things for different parts of the project but I want all 4 tasks scheduled
adjacently so that the electrician only has to schedule his time on the
project in a single block. I realize that I could have a single task do this
but that doesn't allow me to see the individual components as I would like.

Thanks for any assistance.
-bs

 

[Jim Aksel]

You can link the tasks as Finish to Start one after another even if they are
physically far apart in the schedule. However, this is not recommended
becuase you are using scheduling logic to perform resource leveling. That is
not good ... suppose you suddenly found another electrician, you'd have to
relink your schedule.
Instead, place the schedule logic where it should be on real
predecessors/successors. Turn on resource leveling (Tools/Level
Resources...) to keep the electrician from becoming overloaded.
If you only want to send the electrician to the jobsite once, then you can
look at the slack (Total Slack) in the electricians tasks. You can add lag
from predecessors to delay the tasks if it will help match up further down
the schedule. You can also use a SNET (Start No Earlier Than) constraint.

Watch your critical path -- if your electrician goes 0 or negative on Total
Slack then your desire to only send him to the job for one period of time is
driving your schedule and you are finishing later than you could.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim

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

 

[BSP]

Adding to Jim's option of turning on resource leveling, you can prioritize
the tasks to be executed by the resource by assigning priorities to those
tasks and choosing Leveling order in Tools > Level Resources as Priority,
Standard.

Regards
Sai