In this post I’m going to do talk about a tool that’s new to me: Deltek Acumen Fuse. Although the tool itself has been around for a long time, many people (myself included) haven’t integrated it into their toolkits, and it’s time to change that. If your department is serious about project scheduling and you're not using Deltek Acumen Fuse, then you're missing out on some serious power-house
About Michael Lepage
What is the DCMA 14-point schedule assessment?
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In 2005, US Defense Contract Management Agency implemented a 14-point schedule assessment to help the Department of Defense evaluate the enormous volume of contracts and schedules they were tasked with managing. Years later, the DCMA's 14-point Schedule Assessment has become a guideline that is widely used and has been incorporated into many software tools such as Deltek Acumen Fuse and
How to Show the Critical Path in P6
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Not sure how to show the Critical Path in Primavera P6? Not sure if your project's critical activities might be hiding? Don't worry. Here are 4 easy ways you can laser-in on your project's Critical Path in P6 (including 3 reasons you might not have one). 4 Easy Ways to Show the Critical Path in Primavera P6 1. Check the Gantt Chart By default, the P6 Gantt chart will show your project's
How To Import P6 Assignment Codes from Excel
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Perhaps you’ve noticed that as of December 2020, there are some new features in Primavera P6 EPPM (Enterprise Project Portfolio Management), which we are going to take a look at today. Specifically, we’ll talk about Assignment Codes, one of the new Primavera P6 features here to make our jobs easier. But only, of course, if you know how to use everything right. Note: If you didn’t read my last
Primavera P6: How To Use Assignment Codes as Cost Accounts
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Cost accounts: love ‘em, hate ‘em? I’ll tell you what, though: If you're cost-loading a Primavera P6 schedule, you should be using cost accounts. Now, chances are good you haven’t yet because they’re hard to use. I get it; they’re really inflexible. They were designed so that you set them up once for a whole database, and you can't have different versions of them for different projects. Ergo,
Primavera P6 Version 20.12 Is Out. Here’s What’s New.
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Just before the Christmas break, Oracle quietly released Primavera P6 Professional version 20.12. I've had a few days to explore this latest version of P6. Here's what's new in Primavera P6 Professional version 20.12. In case you forgot, Oracle publishes updates to the on-premise version of Primavera P6 annually in December. So we've all had a full year to adjust to Primavera P6 version 19.12 -
Primavera P6 Settings Video Series – NEW
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Primavera P6 sure has a lot of settings. Endless options, preferences, customizations and tools means a lot of confusion for almost any regular P6 user. Luckily, to try and help ease your climb up the mountain that mastering P6 can feel like, Plan Academy has been releasing a series of helpful videos covering the many settings and options inside the sometimes-perplexing software. If you follow
Types of Schedule Delays in Construction Projects
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A 2020 report on worldwide Construction Claims states the global average value of a construction delay dispute to be a staggering US$30.7 million, a trend that has climbed upward from 2010. The report also indicates that the average dispute took 15 months to reconcile. You can read the full report from Arcadis here. Although claims and disputes are the inevitable result of delays to a project,
Track Construction Delays with this Free Delay Log Tracker
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Construction delays costs both Owners and Contractors millions of dollars each and every year. According to a Arcadis' 2020 Global Construction Disputes Report, the global average value of disputes was $30.7 million USD in 2019. That's a lot costs tied up in claims, legal battles and disputes. With so much importance put on managing costly construction delays, why don't we have a better
Benefits of Cost-Loading Your Construction Schedule
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Should you cost-load your construction project schedule? What are the benefits of cost-loading your schedule? Whenever either construction Owners or Contractors are looking at a new project, that's when these important questions come up. I'm going to look at the benefits and tradeoffs of cost-loading a construction schedule from the perspectives of both the Owner and the Contractor. Let's
How To Help Your Project Controls Team Love Online Learning
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Offering online learning for a construction project controls team, to me, seems like a no-brainer. Project controls is tough work. If I had a team of project controllers, I would want them to feel valued and supported in their jobs as much as possible. Because I'm in the business of educating project teams, I do my best to stay on top of workplace trends related to learning, productivity and
Primavera P6 Pro v19.12 is here. Here’s What’s New.
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Primavera P6 Professional version 19.12 was released by Oracle on Dec 23rd of last year. Let me highlight some of the new features, bug fixes and enhancements that you'll want to know about. Let's go! What's new in Primavera P6 Professional version 19.12 Watch the video to see what's new. Read-on for a detailed list of ALL of the
Quickly Export From Primavera P6 To Excel
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Faster is better. That should be Oracle Primavera's mantra. Well, in this case it is! Exporting Primavera P6 data to Excel could not be faster & easier with this quick tip. Getting Primavera P6 Activity data into Excel is essential. Excel's data crunching, grouping, pivoting and filtering is just so much easier to use than Primavera P6's. Even generating S-curves and graphs is better in
Construction Project WBS – Examples to Get You Started
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When it comes to planning a construction project, many of us prefer to re-use elements from previous plans and schedules. But what if you're starting from scratch with no construction project examples to draw from? And are your past projects adhering to construction WBS best practices? Most project planners start building their construction schedule by establishing a Work Breakdown Structure.
Primavera P6: Download a Free Trial
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Primavera P6 Professional is likely the most-used construction project management software package around today. Now at version 20.12, project controls planners & schedulers use Primavera P6 Professional to manage construction projects big and small around the globe. The Primavera P6 download process will let you download a free trial of Primavera P6 Project Management. And we'll take you
Plan Academy Named Spring 2019 “High Performer” by G2Crowd
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Bill Gates once said "We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” And as a budding online training enterprise, we at Plan Academy truly value the feedback of our clients. We love hearing from our students. And we always take their feedback into consideration when we plan a new course or training event. That's why we're excited to announce today that Plan Academy has
How To Import & Export Activity Layouts in Primavera P6
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Primavera P6's Activity Layouts can be a super-feature for helping you to plan, analyze, and progress a schedule. But what about exporting Activity Layouts to other copies of Primavera P6? In this post I'll show you how to import and export those precious Primavera P6 Activity Layouts. The Activity screen is where we spend 95% of our time as Primavera P6 users. Having a facility to configure
Use Primavera P6 Reflections To Merge Scenario Projects
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Reflection projects are a little-known but very handy feature in Primavera P6 Professional. A Primavera P6 Reflection project is essentially a copy of a project but with one snazzy built-in trick - the ability to merge the copied project back into the original at any time. If the genius of this trick hasn't struck you yet, it will. This merging ability was designed to help planners work with
Open Zipped XER files in Primavera P6 v18 – New Feature
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As of Primavera P6 version 18, you can now import zipped XER files directly into Primavera P6. There's no need to uncompress them first. Primavera P6 will read the zip archive directly. Check out our zipped xer files video tutorial to see firsthand how it all works....and also what doesn't
Color Coding Your Primavera P6 Gantt Chart: 2 Ways To Do It
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A picture says a thousand words. And a good color-coding system can do the same on the Primavera P6 Gantt Chart. Did you know you don't need to stick with Primavera P6's default Gantt Chart color scheme? The options are many and in this video tutorial, you'll learn how to color-code bars based on criteria YOU set. You'll learn about 2 ways to set the criteria using Activity Codes or by User
5 Things ScheduleReader Does That Primavera P6 Can’t
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I've been a fan of PrimaveraReader (or now ScheduleReader) for a quite a while. SchedulerReader is a truly great XER file viewer that fills many gaps for organizations using Primavera P6 Professional planning & scheduling software. More on that in a second. Last month, PrimaveraReader underwent a complete rebrand that had it move away from referencing the name "Primavera". Not surprisingly,
24 Project Controls Books That Every Project Controller Should Have In Their Library
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Every industry has its publications that are held to that lofty status of go-to guides, and project controls is no exception. Rather than spend valuable time weeding through the volumes that are available out there, we bring you the top 24 can't-miss project controls books that every good project controller has on their shelf. And now I've kept the promise I made on a recent webinar. Top Project
Install 2 Versions of Primavera P6 On the Same PC – NEW In Version 18
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I used to think installing 2 different versions of Primavera P6 Professional on the same PC was impossible. Well, impossible OR really, really difficult. I used to have a complicated VirtualBox setup with a huge virtual machine that would crawl along with delayed mouse movements just so I could run an older version of Primavera P6 on my PC. Of course, I would install the latest version
How to Audit Your Primavera P6 Global Activity Codes
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I had a very simple question posed to me in the Plan Academy Member's Community area recently about auditing P6's Activity Codes. It was this: How can I prepare a report to see which projects use my Global Activity Codes? ie: Can I prepare a report where I can see all the “Global Activity Codes” used in each project in my Primavera P6 database? Posted by one our P6 trainees, it was a question
5 Tactics To Get Your P6 Project Taken Seriously
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The other day I spoke with a scheduler friend of mine by phone to see how his construction project was coming along. From the moment I asked question “So how is the project going?” I could hear that something was up. “Good…. It’s fine. Things are moving.” “Still making progress?” “Yeah, sure.” He answered. But I could hear the frustration in his voice. I dug a bit deeper to see just
How To Do Rolling Wave Planning in Primavera P6
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One of the biggest challenges with building project schedules is that often you don't know the details of a piece of work but you need it on your schedule regardless. Yes, you know you need to say remediate an area once you've installed the watermain underground. But early in the project, the finer details of what that remediation might look like are scarce. Enter Rolling Wave
These Top 3 Drivers Ensure Project Success According To PMI
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The latest Pulse of the Profession® report from PMI reveals that too much money is being wasted on poor project performance. In today's world when an average of 9.9% of every project dollar is lost to lousy performance, it's time for project professionals to achieve higher results by learning to adapt, adjust and innovate. However, before you become a champion performer, you've got to
How Construction Companies Manage Communications Effectively
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93 out of 100 construction professionals agree that communication is the key to a successful project. Companies are looking to closing gaps in communication that are hindering their productivity, so they can minimize costly errors related to poor communication. The remaining 7% believes that communication is not a key factor in a project and oh boy they are so wrong. Photo When
How To Find Relationship Lag in Primavera P6
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It's not very easy to find Relationship Lag in Primavera P6 project schedules. There aren't really any features to highlight which relationships have lag or lead time. But understanding how leads or lags are used on your Primavera P6 project is a vital part of analyzing a project schedule. We need a process to find relationship lag in Primavera P6 schedule. And I'm going to show you
These 4 Project Controls Software Trends Will Make Waves in 2018
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In 2018, schedulers, planners & cost controllers will continue to deal with the pressures of managing complex projects amidst scarce resources, limited budgets and tight deadlines. And while most project controllers will spend their time in front of a piece of software, our project controls software is changing and evolving in our connected world. Project controls software tools play a
How To Perform As-Planned Delay Analysis On A Construction Schedule
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When there are delays on a construction project and a delay claim has been issued, it's vital to determine who caused the delays and what happens next. Forensic Delay Schedule Analysis is broad area of expertise in project controls whereby a set of techniques are used to analyze a schedule and figure out who is at fault, whether a Time Extension should be granted and if there's monetary
Construction Projects: What I Saw On My Visit To London
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London is a big and inspiring city. I had the chance to spend a week there for a bit of work and a bit of play. I managed to attend 2 excellent conferences, although they are quite underelated. I attended Chris Ducker's first Youpreneur event, and then later the 7th Project Controls Expo. As I walked around the city during the course of the week, I saw lots of construction activity going on in
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