Primavera Tips & Tricks: Import WBS

from Excel to Primavera-P6.

The detailed engineering design phase of large EPC projects would mostly
require a very large number of design deliverables (documents/WBS items) to
be produced as part of its requirements. Populated in a Master Document
Register (MDR) these documents could run into hundreds and even
thousands in very large and complex projects. This makes it arduous and
time-consuming when creating (or typing) each one of these deliverables as
WBS items on Primavera-P6 software. A WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) is
a hierarchical arrangement of the products and services produced during and
by a project.

It is important to note sometimes that due to there sheer volume, these

deliverables could be interpreted as individual activities of the detailed
engineering schedule rather than WBS elements. As low-level WBS items,
they hold underlying activities that must be completed before the document
can be agreed upon by parties to have been delivered. Depending on the
approach adopted by the engineering team and other stakeholders such
activities can include; development, review, and approval of the individual
deliverables.

There is a way to get around this quickly adding multiple WBS elements.
Below I will show how I set up deliverables in an excel spreadsheet before
importing the same into Primavera-P6 (verified for ver.6 to 15) without using
SDK. Also note this can be applied to practically any schedule WBS type;
procurement, construction, etc.

WBS from Excel to Primavera

Step 1: Open a new Excel sheet and set up the headings for WBS ID,
Parent WBS and WBS. See as indicated in the screenshot below.
Step 2: Open the Document register file (in Microsft Word or Excel) with
the list of deliverables (documents/proposed WBS items). Copy the range of
titles under the 'Document Title' heading which you want to implement on your
Primavera-P6 schedule as WBS items. See the highlighted range below.

Step 3: Paste under the 'WBS' title header column of the new sheet
created in step 1. Also, populate the 'WBS ID' title column with your unique
ID characters. (You can use serial numbers as indicated in the screenshot
below). Finally, update the range of cells under the 'Parent WBS' title heading
by filling the relevant numbers depending on the hierarchical structure of the
proposed WBS.
Step 4: Open Primavera P6 and create a new project: NEW-PROJ

Step 5: Navigate to the WBS directory and quickly add random WBS
elements by continually clicking the Add button on the top right-hand end of
the image. (Note: Let the count of WBS items added be equal to or more than
the number of deliverables to be added for the project.
Step 6: Export the NEW-PROJ file in Primavera .XER extension format.

Step 7: Open the exported new_proj.XER file with any standard text editing
program (e.g. Microsoft Notepad or Apple TextEdit). To do this, right-click on
the file and select: >>Open with...>>Notepad or TextEdit. In this case, I open

with Notepad. Scroll down until you locate %T PROJECT (It is located

somewhere on the left side of the open file. See the image below).
Step 8: Highlight and copy all text from the %T PROJECT to the end
of the open .TXT file.

Step 8: Open a new Excel sheet and Paste the copied range from step
7 on it. You will get the result shown below.
Step 9: Take note of the yellow highlighted headings and update areas
below each one as shown in the image below by matching and copying the

range of data from step 3 (WBS, Parent WBS, and WBS ID) to replace the
range of data under headings; 'wbs_name', parent_wbs and 'wbs_id' on this
sheet.

Step 10: Change the names (highlighted in green) under the header titles
highlighted in yellow. In this case, I renamed both from NEWPROJ to
NEWPROJ-1.
Step 11: Copy the entire content on the sheet and paste it back on the
.TXT notepad to replace the previous range from where it was copied from.

(i.e. starting from %T PROJECT and down. Refer to step 8).

Step 12: Save, close and import the .TXT Notepad file back to Primavera-
P6
FINAL RESULT: Complete WBS structure as will be seen in Primavera-
P6
Feel free to offer your suggestions or other methods on how we can quickly
add multiple hierarchical WBS elements.

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