Blog

The Primaned Academy is open for registration!

Yes indeed, you can keep expanding your knowledge in the field of Project Controls in times of Corona. In fact, it might be even easier for you to invest time in education in case Corona created some gaps in your agenda. Of course we took all the measures necessary to avoid spreading the disease:

Measures until June 1st:

All training modules will be organised remotely. So also our Microsoft Project and Primavera P6 Professional trainings will take place with remote learning. We took the following measures to provide the same quality as with our usual classroom method:

  • The training material is sent to the participants before the training (so you receive a physical book instead of a PDF);
  • We use a professional conference system to make sure you clearly see and hear the teacher. The participants will also see the teacher’s screen and the other participants to keep the meeting interactive and personal.
  • The maximum number of participants has been reduced to ensure sufficient personal attention;
  • The course is divided into two blocks of 3 hours each training day. There will be enough breaks to be able to keep focused and concentrated during the training.
  • Participants will receive a simple login procedure that allows you to login to both the video conference call and scheduling tooling without the need for installation;
  • The participants receive a digital certificate after the course.

Measures from June 1st:

If possible the Primaned Academy will switch back to classroom training from June 1st.

So if you have a preference for classroom training you should register for the training modules that are scheduled after June 1st.

We will contact the participants timely if the situation changes. The participants will have the choice of switching to a remote training or postponing the training to a later moment, free of charge.

Claudia Dielemanby Claudia Dieleman

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Collaboration through integration of Primavera P6 EPPM and Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC / Prime)

Niels Ligtvoet discusses the possibilities of integrating Primavera P6 EPPM and Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC/Prime).

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

  • Limiting the information seen/processed by different roles raises the quality level of information.
  • The real power of project controls lies in the integration of data.
  • Combining best-in-class tools, out-of-the-box or tailor-made, provides a clear project insight on your projects and portfolio.

Niels Ligtvoetby Niels Ligtvoet

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Visualizer: An extraordinary view embedded in P6

Introduction

We are all familiar with the old-fashioned but convenient way of presenting our activities in Primavera P6: Gantt charts. Options for shapes of bars, lines and milestones are limited. That is why eventually you can easily run out of options while presenting your activities. It even started to engrave its own visualising norms: bars are blue on left side of the data date and green on right side of the data date. It is time to add some richness to our Gantt chart elements.

Firat Tekilby Firat Tekil

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The start of the Primaned Academy Field committee

The Primaned Academy continuously improves its education, responding to what organisations need for their employees. Our field committee consists of experts in project management, working for various organisations in the Netherlands. They give us advice, both solicited and unsolicited, in order to keep our training courses practical and relevant. The first meeting last month showed how much we can learn from each other in this rapidly changing and exciting field of Project Controls.

Angelina Schiltenby Angelina Schilten

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Scheduling progressed activities

In this blog post, we’re going to dig deeper into a question you will face when preparing or reviewing a schedule update. How do you address “out-of-sequence” progress in Primavera P6?
The user has 3 interesting choices in the schedule options on how the software deals with progressed activities that are out of sequence. This blog post will address 3 options, which will help you better represent reality in your progress updates.

Matthijs Warnezby Matthijs Warnez

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First remote training

Last week we organised a first COVID-proof training. The participants of the PMWeb admin training could follow the interactive training without leaving their homes. In the near future, we will more often offer remote training courses.

Follow our LinkedIn page to stay informed (the webcam images are not shown for privacy reasons).

Claudia Dielemanby Claudia Dieleman

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From Project Controls to Project Intelligence

How can Business Intelligence offer added value within Project Controls?

In the information age, knowledge is essential to remain competitive. Companies are making a shift towards attaining a data-driven culture. Interest in Business intelligence is on a steady rise and today more and more companies are even investing in more advanced set-ups like combinations of big data with artificial intelligence.

Matthias van Campenby Matthias van Campen

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Help! My baseline bars are in the wrong place!

When I started working with Primavera P6, I had a colleague who showed me how you can use ‘global change’ to make sure that your baseline bars are showing the right information. It was fairly simple: you just amended the planned dates to the dates you want in the baseline, and it’s done. Hu? Primavera is not capable of managing baselines? Of course, something else is going on. Like so often, Primavera turns out to be so powerful and versatile that one really needs to understand what’s under the hood to properly operate the system.

Gert Truyensby Gert Truyens

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Integral planning and risk management processes


Integrated project management is becoming increasingly important for project organisations in the Netherlands. At the Primaned Academy, we see that Planning and Risk processes in particular are increasingly carried out by a single person. Our risk specialisation trains a planner to carry out a qualitative risk analysis in order to prioritise and possibly quantify risks on the basis of a probabilistic planning.

Jelmer Wagenaarby Jelmer Wagenaar

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3 metrics, endless possibilities

I’m a true advocate for using (a basic implementation) of EVM on all your projects, or at least the philosophy. The use of Earned Value Management metrics gives a good insight in your current project status at a simple glance. By planning your project carefully and assigning budgets, in hours, euros, documents, resources, to your activities, a world of possibilities opens. Every project stakeholder can have their own personalized reports on their points of interest, with their own style of preference.

Niels Ligtvoetby Niels Ligtvoet

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New Primaned Academy branch in Ireland

Primaned Academy Ireland will start with the Programme Project Controls in March: Learn the basic principles of Project Controls, Choose your planning tool, Specialise to become a professional. Jonah Roche will be responsible for the sales and coordination of the Primaned Academy in Ireland. Interest www.primanedacademy.ie or contact us via j.roche@primaned.com

Claudia Dielemanby Claudia Dieleman

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Change Control: 4 Levels of Change

Gert Truyens explains what the different levels of change are, what they mean and how you can deal with them.

Managing change will always be a challenge in projects. Its importance cannot be overestimated in order to successfully deliver projects. Messing up will have huge implications in a claim-oriented environment. Still we see many project teams struggling with organizing and following a proper change management process.

Gert Truyensby Gert Truyens

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The “Too Late Is Possible” constraint in Microsoft Project

After following the tooling courses Oracle Primavera P6 Professional (P6) and Microsoft Project (MSP) one will identify differences between MSP and P6 on the following topics: milestones, adding activities (tasks in MSP), use of constraints, levelling, baselines, lags and relations. This blog will elaborate on the difference of using the “As Late As Possible” constraints in MSP and P6. It is essential to reckon this difference since it has a significant influence on the schedule.  

Remco Oudshoornby Remco Oudshoorn

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Primavera P6 duration issues – Hours per time period explained

Primavera is a wonderful tool but sometimes it’s calculations give weird results. For instance when filling in durations of an activity, you might’ve encountered a problem similar to the ones below:

  • Your activity duration is showing as 5 days but it starts on the 1st and already ends the 4th
  • Your units/time is showing 8h/d but Primavera is actually calculating with 12h/d

What is going on? Well it’s probably something to do with your hours per Time period settings.

Matthias van Campenby Matthias van Campen

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Primavera P6 and the Longest Path

There is more to showing THE Critical Path in Primavera than your project manager can imagine. Primavera allows you to change certain settings to define the criticality of activities: you can define a threshold value for total float, or choose for the longest path instead of a total float-based critical path.

Gert Truyensby Gert Truyens

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