Programme not levelling - MSP 2013

[Peasy]

Hi

I am putting together a "planned maintenance schedule" for some buildings that the company I work for manage.

I've set a years worth of recurring tasks of 30 minutes each, on a Friday for the fire panel tests, and a years worth of recurring tasks for 2.5h each on various dates of the month fro emergency light tests (ie, some buildings have theirs on the 4th of every month, some the 20th etc).

I've assigned "Dave" to all the resources. As one would imagine, the little red man appears in the indicators column quite a bit. When I hit "level all", nothing is moved. I have (I think) tried everything, and read as many help files as I can see, and nothing seems to work.



The only thing I can do link the tasks with Finish to Start links... ie so when Friday 20/3 fire panel test in building A is done, link it to building B on Friday 20/03, then building C, then D etc and then go back to building A for Friday 27/03. This is going to take me forever and surely levelling should work whether the tasks are linked or not?

Please can someone help!?

[JulieS]

A couple of questions:

Are the tasks manually or auto scheduled?
Have you created the "fire test" task for multiple buildings or only one? How many buildings are involved - more than 16?

What are your leveling settings (day by day, week by week)?

Are you getting any messages back from Project when you attempt to level Dave?

[Peasy]

Originally Posted by JulieS

A couple of questions:

Are the tasks manually or auto scheduled?
Have you created the "fire test" task for multiple buildings or only one? How many buildings are involved - more than 16?

What are your leveling settings (day by day, week by week)?

Are you getting any messages back from Project when you attempt to level Dave?

Hi

Thanks for the reply

- They're all auto scheduled
- The fire test task is on 6 buildings, between 30 - 60 minutes each (4.5h in total and a 8 hour day), they're all scheduled at the beginning of the day.
- The levelling settings were by day, but I set it to minutes
- No messages regarding Dave, I click "Level all" and nothing happens, the little red man stays there and the bars on the chart don't move.


Its the same with the Emergency Light Test, 2.5 hours a day on 18 buildings. 6 of the buildings with a light test also have the fire test.

[JulieS]

I'd first look at the Resource Usage view to see what is causing the overallocation. Clearly if Dave is only working 4.5 hours - he isn't overallocated on a day by day setting. Leveling from the Gantt view (where you see the little red men) is mostly useless - you have no idea why he's overallocated, no idea what tasks are causing the issue.

[Peasy]

Originally Posted by JulieS

I'd first look at the Resource Usage view to see what is causing the overallocation. Clearly if Dave is only working 4.5 hours - he isn't overallocated on a day by day setting. Leveling from the Gantt view (where you see the little red men) is mostly useless - you have no idea why he's overallocated, no idea what tasks are causing the issue.

Ah so am I supposed to level from the resource usage view? I will have a look and try it now

ETA - OK, I went on resource view and can see day by day that Dave is red. However, he is red, even when he is only doing 0.64 days. His calendar is the standard calendar. I cant think of anything else I need to check...

[Peasy]

OK, I think I have worked out what is wrong.

It doesn't seem to like recurring tasks.

I have put some more work in there for our painters. Painting only gets done once a year on the buildings, except for one, where its 2 days a month.

So for all the buildings needing painting, I put in the relevant duration for the year and for the odd building, a recurring tasks, once a month to the end of the year. When I levelled the 2 resources on painting, it moved everything either before or after the recurring task.

Im making the tasks just individual now, to see how they go.




If anyone else has any comments, I would appreciate it

[JulieS]

Recurring tasks are constrained with a Start No Earlier than constraint and also have a leveling priority of 1000 - meaning do not level. You may have more success changing the priority (add the field to the Gantt chart view) to something below 1000 - the lower the number, the more likely it is to be leveled.

You'll also want to allow tasks to be split so they will not be delayed until all of the recurring tasks are complete.

And do not use leveling hour by hour. That is what is causing the overallocations when your resource isn't working a full day. Leave it at Day by Day.

[Peasy]

Originally Posted by JulieS

Recurring tasks are constrained with a Start No Earlier than constraint and also have a leveling priority of 1000 - meaning do not level. You may have more success changing the priority (add the field to the Gantt chart view) to something below 1000 - the lower the number, the more likely it is to be leveled.

You'll also want to allow tasks to be split so they will not be delayed until all of the recurring tasks are complete.

And do not use leveling hour by hour. That is what is causing the overallocations when your resource isn't working a full day. Leave it at Day by Day.

Thanks I will try these today and let you know how I get on


ETA - JulieS - you are a gem, it works perfectly, thank you so much for your help

[JulieS]

Great, I'm glad you were able to get everything to work and thanks for the feedback.