Project management relies on detailed scheduling at every phase to provide a complete and current overview of the project at all times. Mpower project controls support Primavera P6 users by extending scheduling, estimating, and control capabilities with in-depth, real-time data. From job card creation to detailed day-to-day work schedules, Mpower offers complete end-to-end data for project planners, estimators, and schedulers.
Primavera P6's Top-Down Approach
Complex projects include multiple stakeholders, strict regulatory requirements, and are among the most high-risk operational environments out there. Because of these factors, effective project planning requires different levels of detail depending on the activity. For activities at higher levels of the work breakdown structure (such as executive and management summaries), Primavera P6 is an industry go-to thanks to its top-down approach.
Primavera P6 allows individual users or teams of people to plan, schedule, and manage their portfolio, including tasks for resourcing, risk mitigation, and contract management, all from one place. It's common however to see Primavera P6 integrated with other project applications to provide more granular scheduling and estimating detail needed for a variety of multi-level management activities.
Mpower Enhances Primavera P6's Scheduling Details
The solid foundation provided by Primavera P6's for scheduling, alerts, and critical path management (CPM) is strengthened with granular detail from Mpower features such as job card creation and time writing.
Job Cards
Outline the specific tasks that are required to complete project activities. In Mpower, you can create and manage job cards, as well as integrate them into work packs by pulling resource data from estimating norms stored within the system. Job card details can then be used to build high-level activities in the schedule.
Time Writing
Track actual hours worked for cost control and productivity analysis. By adding Mpower to your workflow, you can:
- Collect timesheets for labour, equipment, or materials (often referred to collectively as LEMs)
- Collect productive and non-productive hours as well as overtime (multiple overtime types)
- Enter timesheets through an individual or by a central timekeeper
- Progress entries that are tied into time writing activities
Integrating this detailed timesheet data from Mpower into Primavera P6 makes project management easier by improving resource allocation, cost control, performance analysis, flexibility, progress tracking, and schedule accuracy.
Project Procurement
Mpower allows you to manage supply chains from purchase requisitions through supplier quotes, purchase orders, goods receipts, and purchase invoices. See phased cost commitment levels, back charge relevant items to client, and even call off stock to work orders, job cards, and CTRs while planning and estimating.
Mpower's comprehensive project procurement data enhances supply chain management, cost tracking, client billing, and resource planning, leading to more accurate and efficient project execution in Primavera P6.
Cost Control
Primavera P6 implements cost control at a project level through reporting, tying cost codes to work breakdown structures. Mpower can offer flexible budgeting by allowing users to define budgets from top-down or bottom-up. Not only does it feature built-in tracking for variations and change orders, but it can also summarize periodic actuals into relevant budgets.
Enhance financial management in Primavera P6 with Mpower's flexible budgeting features, allowing for dynamic budget definitions, tracking variations and change orders, and summarizing periodic actuals for accurate budget alignment.
What 5+ Levels of Scheduling Look Like with Mpower & Primavera P6
In project management, five levels of scheduling provide a structured approach to planning and executing complex projects. These levels range from high-level project summaries to detailed, task-specific schedules. Below, we've illustrated how Mpower and Primavera P6 work in tandem to ensure that all phases of a project have the data they need.
Level 1: Executive Summary
- Primavera P6: Summarizes projects as a whole in Summary Tables, displaying high-level project data in the project view
- Mpower: Aggregates data from cost, time, progress, and change tracking modules to provide key milestones visibility and earned value metrics at the executive level
Level 2: Management Summary
- Primavera P6: Allows for some breakdown of major activities, including general requirements, preliminaries, and surveys
- Mpower: Summarized performance metrics from planning, estimating, and execution feed into summaries used for client and contractor reporting
Level 3: Project Coordination Schedule (PCS)
- Primavera P6: Develops an integrated critical path method (CPM), showing dependencies, critical paths, and major milestones across project stages
- Mpower: Supports integration with Primavera, aligning cost and resource data with the critical path. Helps coordinate work by defining scope, estimating resources and durations, and managing job cards
Level 4: Execution & Schedule
- Primavera P6: Used for day-to-day scheduling of workforce tasks by level. Users can differentiate levels by its colour or position in the overall schedule
- Mpower: Captures actuals at the task and workforce level, supporting detailed tracking of execution. This data rolls up to enable comparison of actual hours and costs against planned estimates, supporting proactive schedule and budget control
Level 5: Detailed Schedule
- Primavera P6: Breaks down works into specific tasks
- Mpower: Enter or validate daily timesheets, track actuals per work order or job card, and note productivity, enabling granular control over activities. This data can feed into Gantt charts, providing the structure for visual day-to-day tracking
Level 6+: Job Cards
- Primavera P6: Not available
- Mpower: Allows granular estimating of detail work breakdown and summarization of that detail to Level 5 for scheduling
Turn Your Primavera P6 Schedule into a Comprehensive Plan
Ready to drill down and incorporate detailed scheduling and estimating data to enhance your P6 schedule view? Book an Mpower demo today to learn if our comprehensive project management software is right for your project.
