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Students who attend our Primavera P6 training classes know that we prefer to use Project Calendars rather than Global Calendars. One reason is that other users may have the ability to change Global Calendars, which means their changes are applied to any project using that Global Calendar. Obviously there are many situations where that would be a bad thing. Another reason is that when exporting a project that uses Global Calendars, those Global Calendars then wind up in the Global Calendars list of the recipient who imports the project. Frankly, the only time I want to see a project’s calendars is when I have that project open.  And today’s blog deals with a very specific problem of exporting and importing schedules that use Global Calendars.

During one of our classes a student asked me to look at a schedule he had already started on a project his company was building. When I imported the schedule I ran the schedule calculation (F9) so that I could review the Schedule Log. During my review it became apparent that the project end date that I was seeing was different from what the student was seeing. My first thought was that he had forgotten to schedule the project prior to exporting the file, but even after hitting F9 the project end dates did not match. So what the heck was happening?

As it turned out, not only was my student using a Global Calendar, he was using a Global Calendar with the exact same name as a Global Calendar in my database. This rarely happens to me because even a basic 5-day calendar can be labeled so many different ways, such as:

• 5×8
• 5 x 8
• 5-8s
• Five day calendar
• 5 day calendar

Anyway, I think you get the idea. My student had used one of the Global Calendars provided with the sample projects that are available when installing Primavera P6. I had the same Global Calendars in my database so, presto, it was easy for my student to pick a Global Calendar name that already existed in my database.

Primavera P6 will not overwrite Global Calendars when importing schedules. My version of the Global Calendar remained intact, which is probably a very good thing when you think about it. But as a result, my student and I had Global Calendars that were the same in name only. His actually had more holidays, so the project end date was later. That was the only reason we were getting different results.

Sharing schedules among databases always introduces concerns when global data is being used. Hopefully you will now understand why it is so important to use project-specific data as much as possible.

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I am excited to be heading back to Kansas City to lead another Primavera P6 102 training program. I will be training members of the telecommunications group at Black & Veatch, one of the largest engineering firms in the world with over 9,000 employees. This is my second training program for Black & Veatch. I trained a large contingent at the telecommunications group two years ago. This makes my father very happy, as he started his professional career working for Black & Veatch. Back then Black & Veatch had perhaps a few hundred employees. My father still remembers going out on surveying assignments with Mr. Veatch. Ironically, my dad left Black & Veatch because he did not think there would be much room for advancement! After a short stint working for a general contractor in Paola, Kansas, he started his own construction company with two partners and ran this company quite successfully for more than 25 years. Hard to believe, but my dad has been retired for nearly that long as well. He turns 85 in May 2013.

Update: please note that our Primavera P6 101 class in Kansas City on April 16th is now full. We will be back in Kansas City later this year. Please contact us to be added to our mailing list for the next training session. Thank you.

To celebrate completion of our new website (www.primaverascheduling.com) we are offering a 10% discount on any of our online or in-person P6 training programs. Just enter the discount code “MAR13” during checkout. Training must be booked no later than March 31, 2013 to get this discount. Hope to see you soon!

Construction Science, LLC has established a new website (www.primaverascheduling.com) to handle registration for all of our in-person and online Primavera P6 training programs. Our corporate website (www.constructionscience.com) will begin directing visitors to the new website for registration starting on March 15, 2013. In the meantime, visitors can continue to register for P6 classes on both websites. We will continue to utilize the corporate website for other services that we provide such as Primavera scheduling, change order and claims preparation, and dispute resolution.

We welcome your feedback regarding our new website. Please use the Contact Us page to submit feedback. Thank you!

Bill Pepoon