Q1- Who can teach Primavera P6?
Primavera/P6 training can only be delivered by an experienced Project manager, who has hands on-real time experience on construction projects. Such successful people won’t be found as employees of any training institutes.
Your faculty should have at least 10 yrs. of experience in leading and directing projects and you should also have prior work experience to relate the concepts. It's like you need certification for a planner job and a planner’s work-ex to learn P6. A construction project is a multi-disciplined venture. In real life, project planning concept develops in many ways a. Client-side planning b. contractor side planning c. Greenfield Project d. Brownfield Project e. Contractor wise f. discipline wise etc. Work-ex matters a lot for academics/training of management level.
Q2- From where you should learn primavera P6?
The Training center or an Individual professional?
Don’t do not give importance to Institute brand name but ask about the faculty’s project experience and Qualification.
Training center is ultimately a Business house who needs your hard-earned money to keep the show running. When it is offered cheap, the quality of pedagogy drops down to them, being least bothered about your course or deliverables & yearly follow-ups or work assistance- which is very essential for a new user. A P6 training certificate carries no value until you’ve incorporated your time & efforts for utilizing it on the live project(s). Project planner jobs are offered based on work-ex rather than certificates.
If you’d compare learning P6 with a sample 50/ 100 activities VS working with more than 2000 activities in a real project with money, time & resources at stake, you’d really need the assistance of your faculty/guide. It is wiser to grow with an Individual professional who is a commitment to helping you with real-time project issues even after completion of P6 training.
Should you Join training center as per google star rating or not? – When you aspire for training in Primavera It means you don’t know anything about the software & its deliverables neither project planning in real-time Industry (Most of the cases). You can’t judge a faculty what he /she taught or what he left, at most you may careful about the tool or menu options but it is hard to implement the project with the help of the tool, if you don’t have an idea about the project planning in real-time. Hence Faculty profile & experience matters not the google rating. Only Teaching never gets experience in the real project.
Q3- Duration for learning Primavera P6?
Gourmet Italian Pizza…Bon Appétit !!! But, can you eat 10/15 slices in a day for the next 7 days? Italians would pray for your heart condition & you’d need extra blessings if you’re lactose intolerant. You’d need a longer time to finish the P6 training at your own pace. It is a vast software & even theoretically, It can’t ever be completed within 4 /5/7 days with 6/8 hour class session.
It is most likely for your faculty to showcase planning concepts as- a,b,c,d….15 characters each representing a P6 feature. But after your course gets over & fees have been paid and, you start working with P6, you will come to know it is 52 different ones with special symbols(features).
Professionals recommended P6 Online or offline learning sessions for 3 days in a week with 2 hrs. each-day for at least 1or2 months. Your brain needs lots of practices session.
* Unless you’re a prodigy.
Q4- Learning Primavera PPM or EPPM ?
PPM is Perpetual License whereas EPPM generally Concurrent License by Oracle. In real-time most of the Industry opt for the concurrent license, It typically deals with software running in the server where users connect via the network.
Most of the training center run by demo version software or with perpetual license hence students are not getting the chance to learn Primavera P6 EPPM whereas in the real industry it needs to work in Primavera P6 EPPM.
Q5- Are you learning Primavera as a tool for planning formalities or for real-time implementation?
Never learn Primavera P6 as a tool just to visualize project with room for input errors. If faculty skips any topic/concept, you may be able to Google it. But what about the real-time implementation- where clarity of concepts is imperative? Learning to do real planning is important - not operating the P6 software as Tool. You must learn the meaning of each P6 application feature as per the industry’s general & specific requirement(s).
Learning to plan a project has vital significance because 60 to 70% of project planning work is done over spreadsheets only. Just Execution knowledge is not enough to implement the multi-disciplined Project-Planning.
For example, while training the Resource Planning topic, the faculty should have knowledge of Man & Machine module & Estimation perfectly.
Believe me – If learning software makes a planning engineer, then there is no need to earn an engineering degree. Before learning primavera you should have enough experience by working in the industry to understand this course.
Q6- Technically, who is a project planner?
The Person who manages Engineering, Operation, Maintenance & Execution is called Planner or Project planning manager & the rest are schedulers.
In other way - planners who are delegated to manage and control the Project or the manufacturing site must understand engineering drawings, specification, detail scope and quantities. rest who is working in Primavera & MS Project without understanding or having poor experience with engineering drawings, documents, specifications and dependencies among the disciplines/tasks are just program operator or level scheduler.
Q7- Buying video tutorial or live online classes or training center, which option is better?
I am not against free video tutorials at all. It is good for people who can join the dots & have the prerogative to do mistakes on a project. Also, it depends on person to person to overcome the barrier of correct interpretation of English language & accent predominantly found in the P6 training video by a person of foreign origin. Therefore, live class which allows to further explain a concept is most preferable. Video Tutorials mostly stick on the tools and barely on real-time planning scenario or no sharing knowledge based on your experience. Future Problem solving /help in real-time is always challenging for video tutorial subscribers.
You need a real-time project planner who can support you at the nick of time even after completing the P6 training. Live online class is most preferable as you need to go with your own pace.
Professionals with 10/11 years of experience of using primavera still need my help in real-time industry, It is a bit difficult to know all the options & usage of P6. Primavera is not the only tool for project planning management. Sometimes you need MSP to P6, P6 to Excel or other third party software for working or report generation. Multiple nature of problems, multiple types of solutions.
Recently one fellow from Mexico needed my help with a Primavera feature for his ongoing project (Brewery Beer Plant project) and, after paying 200 $ USD I found that the guy knew primavera & BI better than me. I declined his next payment & said that I am ready to help you free of cost. Interestingly, working together to solve his problem, I acquired his knowledge & skills.
Here some schedule is coming from Germany (Automation work) as MS Project file, some are from Spain as P6 file, multi contractor/ Service provider project. Here he engaged to prepare the master Schedule for the whole plant. It is a challenging situation, working with a different culture, different currency, Cash flow, handling man-hours, cost, different documentation, 1000 of testing & commissioning activities.
More than 8000 Activities to be planned & same needs to be presented in BI also for the management/ Owner review.
Schedule from Italy
Schedule from Germany
Q7- What to learn in Primavera other than normal course structure?
- How to prepare activity chart as per deployed contractor / sub-contractor so contractor resources don’t go idle.
- Learning the estimation to calculate the activity duration.
- As per availability of the resources, activity duration should be calculated.
- How to define Critical & Near Critical activity.
- Close the network logic with logic & sequence.
- Activity chart preparation as per the payment logic.
- Define Activity codes as per waterfall technology.
- Import/Export P6 to Excel & MSP Vice versa.
- How to implement Resources curves in real time project.
- Baseline updates
- Creating S-Curve without resources & cost.
- Adding cost other than resources & expenses.
- Dashboard in EPPM
- Admin in EPPM
- Dealing with Negative float
- How are the Resources measured – Man-Days or Man-Hours ?
- Crashing Method
- 4-Techniques for Levelling Resources
- Calculations based on Resource Productivity.
- Finding Lags assigned in activities in big project.
- 100 schedule health checks before baselining.
- How to Estimating Man-Hours for a Project Bid.
- Where to apply constraints.
- Theoretical quantity Vs Actual update.
- Shortfall Analysis
- Future Period Bucket Planning
- How Is Estimate To Complete (ETC) Calculated
- Resources Assignment
- Monitoring Projects with Resources.
- How To Accommodate Resources Working Different Hours Per Day On The Same Activity.
- How To Cost Load A Schedule So Actual Cost Recalculates Based On Duration Percent Complete In P6.
- Implementing the Change management Schedule.
- Productivity Factors must be applied to each Resource, Contractor and Work Type to ensure the Plan is realistic.
- Extension of time , Forensic planner, Claims, Delay Analysis
- How to make Delay schedule.
- EVM, QA & QC Plan
- Reporting & MIS Preparation
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