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Thresholds, Risks and Issues in Primavera P6

By Don Rote

(December 7, 2011) P6 includes all of the features that were available in P3 and a large numbers
of functions related to multi-project/program level scheduling. Among these new features are
Thresholds, Risks and Issues.

At the program level, the number of activities and schedule participants is typically vast in
quantum. As such, the need to extract critical information in a timely basis is crucial for effective
business decisions.

Because a Program Schedule is typically maintained by a single scheduler (or possibly a team of
schedulers), the information contained within is not often distributed as frequently as it should be.
As a result, team members (internal and external) often find themselves requesting information
about activities that are critical to them or activities in which they are responsible for. Timeliness
of this information is often delayed and impacts critical business decisions.

With the introduction of Thresholds in P6, the schedule can contain user-defined triggers to
identify when the status of an activity has slipped or is close to moving beyond an acceptable
range. For example, if I am a General Superintendent and want to monitor major milestones for
all projects, I could create or request a Threshold to be created for all Concrete Pours. The
Threshold could read like this: If the early finish date variance is greater than three days, have P6
create an issue. Once this Threshold is created, it can be run individually or all Thresholds can be
monitored simultaneously.

After the monitoring is complete (essentially running a query), corresponding Issues are created.
The Issue record in P6 allows for the tracking of details, links to external files (including photos)
and the assignment of a Responsible Manager. With the click of a button, all Issue records (or
individual Issue records) can be distributed via email to the responsible parties.

Issues can then be referenced to define a Risk in P6. The Risk record contains mitigation plans,
notes and details regarding the specific issues.

By using these features, the project team (not just the schedulers) can stay informed with what is
happening on the project. This method eliminates the need to search schedule in attempt to locate
the tasks that are relevant to your scope of work or critical decision. With minimal effort, the
Thresholds can be defined during the early phases of a project and the benefits can continue until
project completion.

Don Rote, President of ROTECH Consulting, Inc., (ROTECH) is responsible for managing the daily
operations of ROTECH while providing consulting and scheduling services to the A/E/C industry. He has
assisted over 400 clients throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico with project and enterprise
consulting for scheduling and project management. As a Master Scheduler, he develops schedules,
performs schedule updates and has extensive experience with forensic schedule analysis. He has performed
scheduling services for delay/disruption claims and impact analysis on commercial and residential
construction projects valued at $500K to over $1BIL.