Critical Path Analysis in P6 – 5 Things I Wish I Knew Earlier

When I first started learning planning and Primavera P6, I thought I had it
all figured out. But it wasn’t until I sat with a client and tried to explain what I
was showing him that I realized I still had a long way to go.

So my latest video tutorial walks you through 5 Things about Critical Path
Analysis in P6 that I wish someone would have told me earlier on as a
planner.

But fret not!

You can learn these Primavera P6 Critical Path Analysis tips now and
forego the pain and suffering I’ve had to endure.  Enjoy!

Welcome to another video tutorial here at Plan Academy Primavera P6

Training. Today we are talking about Critical Path Analysis in Primavera
P6. I wanted to share with you five things that I wish I had known earlier in
my career with Primavera P6. If you are ready, let us go through them.

Critical Path Analysis in P6 – 5 Essential Things to Know

#1 – Decimals Matter
First thing I wish I knew about Critical Path Analysis in P6 is that decimals
matter. Let us go into P6 and I will show you exactly what I am talking
about. Here is a very large energy construction project in Primavera P6. I
wanted to show you that at first glance, if I scroll down and have a look at
my float values and my original durations everything looks pretty normal
here.

But we might have some things hidden if we turn on the decimals. Let us
go into edit user preferences and time units and we will add two decimal
places here to our durations. Great, now why I do that? Have a look at my
total float values. This should be an indicator for you right now.

Total float value is where they used to say one, let us say .085 days. That
is curious what is going on there. It might be something to do with the
calendar. If I scroll back, up to this project and go to a particular area.

There we go the foundation works. Have a look here at my numbers. Most

of my durations are full integers. However, down here in the foundation
works I have some 1.25 days, 2.5, or 3.75 days, now what is going on
there? Showing the decimal can lead you to uncovering some important
things about how your projects have been built.

For example, if I open this up a little bit I can see my calendars now. I
notice that my calendar throughout is pretty much as 10 days 6 hours but
for this section, this is for demonstration purposes, I have switch it over to
the 8 hour by 5 day calendar. By switching that calendar, I actually
changed these duration values. Let me show you what happens when I
switch this calendar back. Just do a fill down. Have a look now my values
are back to whole numbers.

Displaying those decimals can lead you to find inconsistencies with your
calendars as well. I think that is what is going on with these total float
values. Some of these calendars started different times of the day. We are
using a few different calendars in the project. In uncovering things in your
project schedule, decimals matter.

#2 – The Truest Critical Path is the Longest Path

The second item, I wish I had known earlier in my career, as a P6 planner

is that the Truest Critical Path is The Longest Path. What do I mean? Let
us go and look.
Anybody who has use Primavera for a little bit knows that you can go into
filters and turn on the critical path filter. When I do that here is my project’s
critical path. This is a large project and this seems like a very short critical
path for the size of this project. I have a look at my activity account I only
have five activities.

Now if I go in here, uncheck critical and turn on rather the longest path I get
a very different result. I got 109 activities. Now why is that?

Why is my critical path different based on total float or based on the longest
path? What is happening here in this project is that this project actually has
a must finish by date set. You can see that we must finish by the 30th. We
are actually finishing a day early.

Most activities on the critical path well actually have positive float because
of this must finish by date. We are finishing one day early. In fact, we have
one day of positive float on most of the activities. That is why in this case,
we are much better off to use the longest path here so that we actually
show the true critical path and it is not based on total float but it is based on
the longest path through the project schedule.

#3 – Multiple Critical Path = More Risk

The third thing I wish I had known earlier in my career was that Multiple
Critical Paths Mean More Risk to the project. What do I mean by that? Let
us have a look at P6.

Come back in Primavera P6 and I want to look at my critical path in such a

way, as I want to see if I have overlapping critical path activities. How do
we do that? Well, I still have my longest path filter on.

What I can do is simply go up here to the customized area, open that and
simply just to delete to remove any grouping. Then I will simply sort this
whole thing by start date. What this gives me is a very clear and very
structured critical path picture.

Now what I want to look for is areas where I have overlapping activities.
Here is a particular area here. I have lots of overlapping activities. I will
zoom it in a little bit.

You can see that this is not necessarily a dissection with multiple critical
paths. But for any place where I have activities that are overlapping,
starting those activities on time each one of them in ending them on time,
each one of them adds a higher element of risk to my project. They all need
to start on time and they all need to finish on time. I have really multiplied
my risk by 6 here because I have all of these activities overlapping at the
same time.

If we scroll up, we could probably find another example of that. Again, up

here two activities that are going on at the same time are there on the
critical path. Having a look at your critical path in this sort of view can help
you quickly find the riskiest areas to manage those multiple critical paths
and overlapping critical path activities.

#4 – The Clock is Your Friend

Number 4, The Clock is Your Friend. Let us have a look. The clock can be
a handy tool for helping you analyze issues with your critical path, issues
with dates and issues with calendars. Here we have a situation where we
have either .85 days of total float or 1.47 days of total float.

I am not sure what that is and why that is going on and why have 5.999
days. Let us go up to user preferences and on the dates tab here we want
to turn on this 12-hour clock. Here we have our clock now and every date
now has a timestamp next to it for start or finished days.

This can be handy to help me understand what is going on. Here we have
activities finishing at 5:00 pm starting at 8:00 am but here we have activities
that are finishing at 7:00 am. What is going on with these 1.47 days of total
float?

Back here in the projects view, where I am looking at my project and I am

looking at the dates tab. If I look at my must finish by date now the project
must be finished before 7:00 pm on June 30th. In fact, it has finished at
7:00 am on June the 29th.

That accounts for 1.47 days of total float. It is the difference between June
30th 7:00 pm and June 29th 7:00 am. Primavera has turned that number
into a fraction. If you need to analyze things at a detailed level, it is a great
idea to turn on those decimals as well as to turn on your timestamp.

#5 – Relationship Columns
The last thing about critical path analysis in P6 that I wish I knew was
Relationship Columns. Let us go and have a look at P6. We are looking at
some of the construction milestones up at the top of the project.
We are looking at this completion of raft foundation concreting milestone it
has a predecessor and a successor. But what I can’t tell from this view is
anything about whether the date of this finished milestone is affecting the
date of the successor, the basement wall and column. Right click at any
column customize the columns.

Let us get rid of I.D WBS. We do not need that activity status. I am not
interested right now. Driving? I would add that guy in as well as we want to
add start and finish dates. Click okay on that.

On the right-hand side, we want to do the same thing, click apply. Here we
have the completion milestone for the raft concreting. The incoming
predecessor is a driving predecessor. That means that this finished date on
this activity August 11th is forcing this activity to get its own August 11th
finished date.

However, the successor here is not a driving relationship. The successor

does not start immediately after. In fact, it has a one-day leg this is the
August 12th, whereas this is August the 11th. Putting these columns up
here allows you to do some really quick analysis.

Let us do one more, completion of auxiliary building. Now we are looking at

more relationships. We have a number of incoming predecessors. This
driving check box indicates that the finished date hereof this activity is
driving the milestone finished date.

This milestone is also driving two other activities to start. But it also got
predecessor or successor here but it’s not a driving relationship. Having
that driving relationship and start and finished date columns there is
incredibly helpful to help you understand what is going on.