Customer Reviews

Construction Scheduling with Primavera: Project Planner

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The text provides a very thorough reference to using the P3 program. Many P3 program features and capabilities are described in detail (resource loading, cost loading, graphs and options, updating) and thus the book is a good supplement to that provided in Primavera's documentation.

... but that's it. Upon review the reader finds that the book serves well as an expanded reference or user guide for P3, but it does not provide much practical guidance on "Construction Scheduling". For example, how do I use P3 to handle these situations; how to handle vendor procurement delays, approval requirements (shop drawings) and how to establish predecessor milestones to trigger approvals or resubmittals, multiple calendars to handle weather or weather-independent activity, resource allocation in the real-world (T&M work, equipment rental rates, etc..), practical use of earned value for variance analysis and mgmt control, preparation and maintenance of "as-planned" and "as-built" schedules, etc.... Many of these items would be more relevant with regard to "Construction Scheduling" and should be included in a book titled this way. Good P3 reference, but don't expect this to help you manage or learn any new tricks for applying P3 to construction jobs. Drop the words "Construction Scheduling" from the title, and consider this a P3 how-to book.

For the big price, this book was a big disappointment. The first four chapters are devoted to the fundementals of Project Management, and yet nowhere in the book is Work Breakdown Structure even mentioned. If you're new to Project Management and P3, this would be a good place to start. If you want to get the most out of Primavera though, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Where do I begin? I can't write up every problem with this book, but just highlight a few of the downfalls. The first 80 pages can be dumped as they relate to what scheduling is all about and how to develop schedules. This info can be found in any book on scheduling or even Marchman's other Primavera book. He completely avoids the heart of what Primavera Enterprise is all about: THE ENTERPRISE STRUCTURE!!! This is the meat and potatoes to this new version of Primavera and if you do not have an understanding of how the EPS, OBS and WBS work and interact, you will be at a major loss here. When he finally gets to use the program in Chapter 4!, he fails to explain how to utilize the "Open Global Data button. This is a key element for controlling the Enterprise Structure of the program. He waits until the end of the chapter before he gets into Administrative Preferences, which should be at the begining. The chapters on Cost and Resources are very limited, as Enterprise takes on new areas of cost control for a project, that Primavera 3.1 doesn't. There is no mention about change order control, a major area that Primavera has incorporated into this program. He walks you through the printing of schedules, but fails to preface the chapter that Enterprise has numerous printing issues that have yet to be resolved by Primavera. He doesn't discuss anything about project codes; doesn't go into details about setting up a cost accout structure; makes no mention about timesheets usage; doesn't touch on the fact that you can links excel and word to activities; doesn't discuss the notebook feature; doesn't talk about Primavision, etc. I was looking foa an additional reference manual to complement the Primavera manual. This book is useless. ...

The book is intended as a lab manual to improve usage of P3E. It was written by a professor to be used as a companion to a more traditional planning/scheduling text, but tries to also be a standalone text.

The strengths here are that it is 375 pages of material, including many detailed examples of using Primavera, using examples from construction, grouped into chapters by general area with sections and subtopic paragraphs in bold so it's fairly easy to flip thru and find things. It does explain key terms, demonstrate some common operations, and has a few tips in the mix such as explaining the different way scheduler vs estimator schedules concrete or noting that 2-week windows are a useful printout for daily organization.

The weakness is that it did not concentrate on being a good workbook. The description parts are largely generic blurbs that the traditional text would handle better, and are isolated bits instead of being in an overall approach to the project control techniques. You also do not get to see up the higher abilities of Primavera to organize the whole effort, and the construction scheduling are just unrelated examples not a course in construction scheduling. Finally, while it's not a menu-walk kind of book, there was too much on display options in Gantts and too little on controlling baselines and tracking -- or some more of those real-world tips. I'm left thinking I need the course notes that he wrote this for.

Chapters:
1 - Into to Scheduling; 2- Rough Diagram Preparation; 3 - Schedule Calculations; 4 - Gantt Chart Creation; 5 - Gantt Chart Format; 6- Resources; 7 - Costs; 8 - Gantt Chart print preview; 9 - PERT Diagrams; 10 - Tabular Reports; 11 - Updating the Schedule; 12 - Tracking Resources; 13 - Tracking Costs.

Am 100% pissed about losing $100 buying this piece of crap. Everyone familiar with Primavera knows that Primavera has written an excellent program P3 e/c especially for construction. I assumed Marchman knew this as well. After reading Chapter 4 (the first 80 pages being on general scheduling concepts for virgins), I tried to set up his sample project on a copy of the P3 e/c software. NO WAY. Far too much stuff was left out of the book such that it was 100% worthless. Very possible it may work on P3 e. However, as Primavera has had the P3 e/c out for quite some time, and construction companies are widely using P3 e/c -- why bother? Note that one other review rates this book as "terrible". If you read closely the remaining reviews, as of May 5, 2004, you will find they are actually for Marchman's Primavera P3 book, and are incorrectly placed here.

Am 100% pissed about losing $100 buying this piece of crap. Everyone familiar with Primavera knows that Primavera has written an excellent program P3 e/c especially for construction. I assumed Marchman knew this as well. After reading Chapter 4 (the first 80 pages being on general scheduling concepts for virgins), I tried to set up his sample project on a copy of the P3 e/c software. NO WAY. Far too much stuff was left out of the book such that it was 100% worthless. Very possible it may work on P3 e. However, as Primavera has had the P3 e/c out for quite some time, and construction companies are widely using P3 e/c -- why bother? Note that one other review rates this book as "terrible". If you read closely the remaining reviews, as of May 5, 2004, you will find they are actually for Marchman's Primavera P3 book, and are incorrectly placed here.

Am 100% pissed about losing $100 buying this piece of crap. Everyone familiar with Primavera knows that Primavera has written an excellent program P3 e/c especially for construction. I assumed Marchman knew this as well. After reading Chapter 4 (the first 80 pages being on general scheduling concepts for virgins), I tried to set up his sample project on a copy of the P3 e/c software. NO WAY. Far too much stuff was left out of the book such that it was 100% worthless. Very possible it may work on P3 e. However, as Primavera has had the P3 e/c out for quite some time, and construction companies are widely using P3 e/c -- why bother?

very comprehensive text, this book is required for my majo