Project Management Using MSProject

1. MSProject, as a general purpose Project Management Software catering

to any type of project, involves scores of tables / charts / reports, hundreds of new terms
and variables with their own initial ‘default’ settings and many of these parameters are as
used in the US; these make the program look too complicated and confusing unlike the
simple looking Word or Excel. This note is to help the user in the planning and scheduling
with MSProject for a typical highway project by estimating the initial durations, assigning
resources and to make MSProject to respond for changes in the resources and or
quantities of the items of work.

2. The basic data from a typical highway project are the date of start,
completion period and milestone details involving nearly 150 items of work as in the BOQ;
the items of work are generally grouped as Earthworks, GSB, WMM, BT Works, CD Works,
Bridges and Miscellaneous Works; in addition to these items of work, we also include
Mobilisation and Survey / Setting-out activities and we add Start and End as items in the
beginning and end of the list of items of work , which we call as the tasks.

3. It is to be noted that the above BOQ data cannot be entered directly into
MSProject; without advanced techniques and VBA programming, which will be considered
later. For beginners to use MSProject directly we note that the basic input data to
MSProject are:

a) The date of start – entered in the ‘Project Information’ under ‘Project’

menu;
b) Task Name, Duration, Resource Names and Predecessors in the ‘Gantt
Chart’, which is the opening page of MSProject; the Start and Finish
Dates therein are automatically filled.

4. The initial estimation of durations of different tasks is made for the BOQ
quantities using standard daily output of resources as per the Equipment Planning; please
see Annexure-1 for the data and details used in a typical Highway Project. A model data will
be as shown below:

Item of work Unit Qty daily/unit units Duration days

Earthworks cum 1200000 600 4 500
GSB cum 75000 400 1 188
WMM cum 60000 300 1 200
BT works cum 40000 250 1 160
CD works No.s 60 0.05 4 300
Bridges No.s 7 0.01 2 350
Drain / Protn wks Km 40 0.2 1 200
Finishg wks Km 40 0.5 1 80

The above initial estimation of durations can be done conveniently in Excel and assigning a
cell formula in column F for duration as “=c1/(d1*e1)” as in “[Link]”.

5. Before we start entering these data into MSProject, it has to be set for the
following parameters under the ‘Tools’ Menu:

a) Click ‘Change Working Time’; select all the seven days of the monthly calendar
displayed; select ‘Working Time’ and click ‘Ok’.
 b) Non-working days and 50% or 75% working in monsoon months for Hotmix or
other works can be assigned later in Resources Calender.
c) Click ‘Options’; remove ‘$’ and enter ‘0’ for ‘Currency’ symbol and decimals in the
‘View’ tab; in the ‘Schedule’ tab select ‘Days’ for ‘Work is entered in:’
d) Click ‘Format’ menu and select ‘TimeScale’; select Major scale Units as ‘Years’
and Minor scale Units as ‘Months’.
e) Click ‘Format’ menu and select ‘Ganttchart Wizard’; select ‘Critical path, None
thanks, No thanks’ in successive settings.
f) Later you can format the bar styles, grid lines etc. etc.

You can as well use [Link] file ready with the above settings.

6. With the initial estimation of durations of different tasks and formatting of

the MSProject, we are ready to enter data in to the Ganttchart:

1. as for any project we enter ‘Start’ as the first task and enter ‘0’ as its
duration as it is an event;

2. next we enter ‘Mobilisation’ as the second task and enter a typical

value of 45 days as its duration;

3. enter ‘Survey / Setout’ as the third task and enter a typical value of
75 days as its duration.

4. copy the cells having the BOQ items in column A of our Excel and
paste them in TaskName at row no 3 into the Ganttchart;

5. similarly copy the cells having the duration values in column E of our
Excel and paste them in Duration at row no 3 into the Ganttchart.

6. move the bar chart portion to make ‘Resource Names’ visible; as per
the equipment planning and allocation of the number of ‘units’ we
made in the Excel, enter the names of resources such as EW[4], GS,
WM, HMP, CD[4], BR[2], DR, FN;

7. please note that in Ganttchart ‘Resource Names’ you enter just the
name of the resource when only one unit is allocated and the name
followed by [X] indicates the number of units allocated; fractional
units can be entered, with the least as 0.01, which may sound
impractical – but useful when we have same task and resource for
milestone or sectional repetitions or to fine tune any resource to work
overtime, like 10Hrs instead of 8Hrs.

8. as for any project we enter ‘End’ as the first task and enter ‘0’ as its
duration as it is an event;

7. The next step is to link the tasks to be entered into the ‘Predecessors’
column of the Ganttchart as narrated for each task in the following steps:

1. Mobilisation: enter 1, meaning after Start event having the task id 1.

2. Survey / setout: enter 2ss +15, meaning that this work starts after 15
days of starting mobilization having the task id 2.
3. Earthworks: enter 3ss + 30, meaning that after a month’s time after the
starting of setout we estimate that the earthwork can start.
4. GSB: enter 4ss + 30, meaning that after about a month of earthwork, we
estimate that the GSB can start.
 5. WMM: enter 5ss + 30, meaning that after about a month of GSB, we
estimate that the WMM can start.
6. BT works: enter 6ss + 30, meaning that after about a month of WMM,
we estimate that the BT can start.
7. CD works: enter 3ss + 30, meaning that after about a month’s time after
the setout we estimate that the cd works can start.
8. Bridges: enter 3ss + 30, meaning that after about a month’s time after
the setout we estimate that the bridge works can start.
9. Drain / protn works: enter 4ss + 120, meaning that after about four
month’s time after the setout we estimate that these works can start.
10. Finishing works: enter 7ss + 120, meaning that after about four month’s
time after the BT, i.e after some wearing coat, we estimate that these
works can start.
11. End: The end of all the works is an event as we put Start in the
beginning; enter the last task of each linked series i.e 8,9,10,11.

8. Now our Gantt chart is ready; before cash flow and Pert Chart, we will
recall that our project calendar allowed for 7 days, 12 month working. Now we will
provide for 50% working for BT in July and August for rains as indicated below.

1. Note down the Duration, Start and Finish dates of BT works item; select the
Resource Sheet;
2. In the resource sheet select the resource “BT” and right click and select resource
information and in the pop up, select the tab Working time that shows the calendar
for the resource;
3. move to the months between Start and Finish dates; select alternate weeks in July
and August and mark them ‘Nonworking time’;
4. get back to Gantt Chart and you note that the duration remains the same but the
Finish date is pulled out allowing for the rainy days we declared in step 3;
5. also, note that the project calendar remains unaffected and the rainy days are not
shown shaded as non working, because the resource calendar is separate from the
project calendar.
6. However, the cash flow will be modified automatically when the resource calendar is
modified.
7. You may declare for any other item of work as explained above.

9. Effect of Changing Resources and or Quantities:

1. Look at para 6.7 above, where we noted that under the Resource Names column of the
Gantt Chart we enter the resources as R[x], the number inside the brackets indicating the
units of resources deployed; you can change this and see that:

a) the start date does not change;

b) the duration and finish date change.

2. The effect of changed quantity means the changed duration; use your excel sheet to get
the changed duration; enter this in the duration column of the Gantt Chart and see that:

a) the start date does not change;

b) the duration and finish date change