In this month’s newsletter, we will examine how to check for some of the most common schedule quality problems in Oracle Primavera P6.
Delivering and maintaining a quality schedule is necessary to remove ambiguity in a schedule’s construction and assist in the development and effective execution of Planned Project outcomes. In many cases, the schedule that needs checking is one that you have received from a contractor or an external company. Conducting a good quality check before accepting the schedule is important.
What are some of the common problems that occur in schedules? The following are some of the more common issues: open-ended activities as a result of missing logic, crowding of logic, excessive activities with constraints, unsatisfied constraints, negative lag, and a large number of different calendars in use. All of these issues affect the quality of the schedule produced in Oracle Primavera P6 and will provide a strong indication as to whether or not a project will ultimately achieve execution success.
This month we will look at two of the issues mentioned above, open-ended activities and excessive activities with constraints.
Top Tip #1: Checking for Open-Ended Activities
In P6 there are two methods available to find missing logic. The first method, visual check, allows you to assess the open-ended activities visually, but the second method, schedule log, is more effective because of its accuracy and speed in producing the schedule log.
Method 1 Visual Check:
Follow these steps to check for open-ends:
Step 1: Log into Primavera P6 and open the project schedule that needs to be checked.
Step 2: Open a suitable layout to display the Gantt chart.
Step 3: Click the schedule icon in the toolbar. 
Step 4: In the Schedule pop up window select the ‘Options’ tab. 
Step 5: In the ‘Schedule Options’ window click the ‘Radio’ button to select ‘Make open-ended activities critical’.
Step 6: Click ‘Close’ and then ‘Schedule’.
Step 7: In the schedule you will see other activities that have joined the critical path and are coloured red.
Before: 
After: 
Whilst this method does show you the open-ended activities graphically, it is not the best method because it is less accurate than creating a schedule log and isolating Activities with either absent Predecessors or absent Successors.
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