Resource Theory - Variant of previous question

[Kathleen]

If I have a project that will require 4 men onsite for 8
hours to complete a project in one day, and I enter 32
hours as the required labor at their company rate, Project
expands my timeline to appear that the task will take 4
days, when it will only take one.

I will be using this company (furniture installers)
several times during the project, each with a different
labor force that day depending on the scope for that
phase. What is the best way to enter this.

Thanks in advance for your help - I am new at project and
have searched all the help files unsuccessfully for an
answer.

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hello Kathleen,

How did you enter the data : if you entered the Duration = 1 day and the
Work = 32 then Assign a resource, MS Project 2002, unlike the previous
versions, adapt the Duration for only on Resource unite ... and display a
(false) assignment of 4 unites. All this with the standard setup "Fixed
units" for the Task Type in the Advanced tab of the Task Information dialog
box.

change the Task type to "Fixed Duration", at least temporarily for that
manip. and everything work well as you expected.



Gérard Ducouret

 

[Jonathan Yong]

Set your task to Fix Work, then assign your resources and specify 8hr
Work for each of them.

 

[Steve House]

Where are you entering the 32 hours of required labour? Are you putting
it in the work field or the duration field? (Work would be the correct
one.)

When I think of "resources" I usually think of skill sets. Most likely
I'll need to distinguish one engineer from another because they
represent rare and unique skill set combinations. It matters who
installs my router. On the other hand, I really don't much care who is
on the south end of a north-bound broom - no disrespect for the value of
their work but one custodian is pretty much interchangeable with
another. I would thus list engineers by name as individuals with a max
allocation of 100% but custodians as an aggregate resource with a max
allocation representing the total number of individual workers available
in the job category. I'll tell their department head how many I'll need
on a task and I'll leave it to their supervisor to decide which ones he
sends over.

Here's how I would do it - Create the resource "Furniture Installers"
and give it a Max Allocation of 400% or whatever percentage represents
the total number of guys they *could* send if you needed it. This means
you could use them at any level up to all 4 guys. Create the task "Move
Furniture" or whatever it is and set its duration to 1 day. Assign the
resource to it with an assignment units of 400%. That means 4 guys are
assigned - you don't care who, just that there are 4 of them - and
Project will calculate the 32 man-hour work estimate for you.