If you’re attending Collaborate11 this year, be sure to visit CBA at booth #230 in the Primavera section and learn more about how our products and services can help your Project Management efforts.  We’ll be at the booth from 6-8pm tonight and 10:15 am – 4:15 pm on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Visit our booth for a free gift. 

Bryan Gardner, CBA employee and one of the nation’s best Primavera P6 and Contract Management Consultants, was selected by Oracle to present at this year’s conference.  He will be presenting on Oracle Primavera’s Contract Management. Many organizations are awarded contracts based on units, where quantities are estimated by the owner and pricing is fixed. Most of these companies have developed spreadsheets for tracking these contracts. This presentation will explore tracking the same contract using Contract Manager’s (CM) contract, change management, materials, daily report and payment requisition modules. The contract is created using CM. Utilizing the Materials portion of the contract line items, users are able to log work accomplished in the daily reports module. These materials are then tallied and reported in the contractor’s monthly payment application to the Owner.

The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and the Quest International Users Group (Quest) annually host COLLABORATE, which brings thousands of oracle technology and applications professionals to one venue for oracle education, customer exchange and networking.

COLLABORATE 11, taking place April 10-14, 2011 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, will attract thousands of Oracle users across all spectrums.

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Working as a Primavera Contract Management consultant for the last six years has provided me the opportunity to sample the food of many regions and cities. One particular favorite food of mine is pizza. This isn’t an effect of my traveling over the last few years, but has been a weakness of mine over the last 30+ years.

Everybody has their favorite. Local or chain? Regular, thin or deep dish crust? Heavy or light on the sauce? Carnivore’s delight or vegetarian feast? Mushrooms? Anchovies?   I prefer deep dish, light sauce, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms (canned) and baked a little longer than normal.

So by now you may be asking why is this guy making me hungry when I should be getting information about how to manage my projects better? Because your project management system should afford you the same flexibility!

What documents do you want to manage in your system? Just submittals and RFI’s, or all project communications? Contracts and Changes, with or without Change Management? Fixed price or Unit Price method? Is the system just a log, or do you want to use it to generate functional documents?  I could go on forever!

On a regular basis, I will endeavor to post some handy information regarding Primavera Contract Management system and some real-world success regarding how different companies are making the system work for them, not just adapting their way to the stock system. I would love to say check back each week, or twice a month, but I might be too busy trying out a new pizza to post. The keys don’t work well with cheese in them!

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To set up the fields displayed in the Trace Logic view, open the network view, then the Activity Network Options and specify the requirements for the activity box. The box will be formatted within ‘Trace Logic’ as it was in the Network View. Next open the Activity view with the gantt option selected and click on the task you need to perform the Trace function on, then click the Trace Logic icon. From the Activity view select File / Page Setup – Options tab and select only the ‘Trace Logic’ checkbox. Close Page Setup and select Print Preview, from within Print Preview setup the print requirements needed and print.

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I am often asked whether it is better to structure a project using P6 WBS or Activity Codes.  To a certain degree, it is a matter of personal preference, as either method can provide a structure in which to manage the deliverables of a project.   My preference is to build a schedule utilizing a WBS, in a traditional manner, to lay out the projects deliverables and workflow.  I would then use Activity Codes to supplement the ability to group, filter, and sort project data, therefore, enhancing performance analysis and reporting.  I have also utilized project structures where the WBS was built out to a level 3 or 4 and then activity Codes were used for the remaining project levels.  Project integration to Master Projects, owner requirements, and project management principles are other factors to consider when deciding how to structure projects.

And Now Beyond the Obvious…

Outside of personal preferences and integration needs, additional factors should be considered when deciding how to structure a project.  The following are WBS attributes that cannot be performed and/or utilized by Activity Codes:

• WBS Summary Activities: A great way to highlight a Level 2 Schedule with a neat waterfall flow and to manage resources and costs at a rolled up level
• WBS elements can have Notebooks assigned
• WBS elements can have Work Products and Documents assigned
• Security can be assigned at the WBS level
• Thresholds, Risks, and Issues can be monitored and tracked at the WBS level
• Budgets, Spending Plans, and Budgets Logs can be managed and tracked at the WBS level
• Copying activities is a much easier task when grouped by WBS
• Earned Value attributes including WBS EV Milestones can be set at the WBS level
• The Tracking View is designed to use WBS elements
• Long range Resource Planning can be performed at the WBS level
• Projects can be summarized to specific WBS levels
• In R8, you can use WBS elements to develop project template plug-ins or fragnets (mini-templates) to populate existing or new projects

So the next time you are planning out the development of a Primavera project consider all of the facts before deciding what the best method will be to structure your project.

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Critical Business Analysis is pleased to announce that we have become a preferred, elite Oracle Primavera Specialized Partner for Primavera P6 Enterprise Portfolio Project Management.  Oracle’s acquisitions of over 60 companies in the last 4 years has created a major need to differentiate their partners.  The specialized program developed by Oracle to certify their preferred partners expertise in; customer satisfaction, support, implementation, education, integration and sales, gives them the confidence to showcase their preferred specialized partners as part of the Oracle team.  There are currently less than 70 partners that have completed the specialization program in North America and only 5 specialized in Primavera, and we are proud to be part of this elite team. You can view our profile on Oracle’s website by clicking here.

Thank you to all of our customers for the excellent references we received during the specialized certification program and to our employees who worked extremely hard and put in extra hours to pass all the required testing.  We hope this specialized program helps our customers and prospective customers understand that CBA is committed to success in the Portfolio Project Management & technologies market place.

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All good things must come to an end and the end is at hand for Primavera P3 and SureTrak two venerable products that were the tools that made sure projects from The Big Dig to millions of miles of roads and bridges were completed on-time and on-budget. 

Contructech Magazine chimes in by stating:  

“Oracle continues to bring to market new releases of Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management—even announcing the latest release from Oracle OpenWorld last week. However, in the past few years, plans for both Primavera SureTrak and Primavera P3 have remained undefined.  Now, Oracle confirms it will stop selling both products on Dec. 31, 2010. However, the company does confirm it will continue lifetime support of both products based on its Applications Unlimited program.

Still, for the construction industry, questions linger. According to a recent survey of Constructech readers, approximately 35% of construction professionals use Primavera products from Oracle for scheduling. This shows SureTrak and Primavera P3 have been some of the most widely used scheduling products in the construction industry.

While SureTrak and P3 users can continue to receive support from Oracle, some may choose to make tough decisions and look elsewhere. Other options include moving to Oracle’s Primavera P6 software, which is more of a full project-management system, as opposed to a targeted scheduling solution.”

As stated above although the product will still be supported the implications for project managment professionals are huge.  First, both products will cease to be mandated for use in bid specifications for new projects.  Secondly, although the products will be supported by Oracle no new code will be developed, since both products have a 16-bit code base they will present an issue when upgrading to Windows 7 and beyond.

Here at CBA we have sold thousands of licenses of both SureTrak and P3 to our customers over the years and we are dedicated to providing the best migration path to other tools including Oracle Primavera P6 release 8.  We announced yesterday a series of webinars beginning on October 25th to introduce you to P6 r8 and to explain your migration options.  In addition, our newly announced Contractor Compliance Program will provide large owners and prime contractors a service that will help to ensure bid specs are written to proper tools and services and provide support to winning bidders to easily comply with bid requirements.  Please contact CBA for more details.

Here are the links to register for the P6 R8 webinar series:

October 25 Introduction – Release 8: The Future of P6

November 17 Demo – Release 8: The Future of P6

December 8  Migration – Release 8: The Future of P6

 We would like to hear your comments and concerns on this topic, so please visit our Facebook page to post your comments and talk with our support experts and consultants.

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You read the bid specs for a highly desirable job and find out, that to be the successful bidder, the project schedule must be done in P6 and, on top of that, the schedule is to be resource loaded.  Your team is very proficient using Project as a scheduling tool but have never used P6.  It is important that your Construction Company gets this job…so you consider your options.

• Contract someone to create and manage the P6 schedule? (one time short term benefit with no option for an internal future P6 plan)
• Contract someone to create the P6 schedule, install P6 and quickly train the Project Team how to manage a schedule in Primavera? ( risky since the internal folks will have very little practical experience )
• Bring in a consultant to install the P6 software, train your project managers, set up the database environment for future scheduling needs and let your internal folks create and manage the schedule? ( probable the best option under the circumstances but not ideal as the time needed to effectively plan out how to utilize the P6 product may not be available…Good pre-planning is always one of the  keys to success)
• Use your time machine to go back in the past and implement P6 using a well thought out plan now that you have the necessary time to do it right?  (the best option if only….)

Of course, you don’t have connections with the late H.G. Wells so the Time Machine is not an option.  What you do have is the knowledge that more and more project owners are requiring the use of P6 as the scheduling tool.  So don’t you get caught with your P6 down.  Take the initiative now to make the investment in your team to successfully meet the current P6 scheduling needs of today’s project owners.

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