What I like best about Powerproject’s Help Feature If you want to know about every field on a dialogue box, click F1. In this example, I’ve brought up the Format Bar Chart dialogue box. Click on “Explanation of the fields on the dialog” to see an explanation of every field of the active…
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Look-aheads are created to give decision makers a means of monitoring upcoming tasks. This guide serves as a method to create a look-ahead but is by no means the only way. For this look-ahead, we will create the following: A new Date Zone – so that we can zoom in/out on tasks that are within…
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Construction is a very risky business and the CPM schedule has become the basis of the evaluation of progress and delays both during projects (contemporaneously) and after the fact (forensically). Various studies indicate that less than 50% of US construction projects are completed on time.
There is negative float in your schedule and yet you’ve checked for constraints on your activities and can’t find any…puzzling, right? Unfortunately, there is a sneaky type of constraint at the project level that can also force negative float through the schedule even if none of the activities are constrained. It’s totally invisible when you’re…
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Is your team taking advantage of project scheduling to stay on track? Or are you avoiding the creation of a schedule because you think it takes too long, it’s too complex, or overkill for your projects? If so, you could be setting yourself up for avoidable problems later. Schedules are not a “chore” that must…
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Life has a funny way of showing you who you are. For Erin Batrich, life has repeatedly shown her that she is meant to teach. Even if she wasn’t so sure of that to start… After going to college for teaching, Erin had a change of heart and decided, instead, to pursue a career…
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You’ll just about never see Mike Brooks around the Catalyst office. That’s because he’s one of our road-warriors who will regularly embed with client teams on complex projects. Mike has been a Schedule Consultant at Catalyst since 1995. His assignments can last months at a time and get quite complex. But that’s just how Mike…
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A Critical Path Method (CPM) scheduling tool such as Asta Powerproject utilizes several pieces of information – calendar, duration, links, etc. – to calculate dates for each task. Within Powerproject, there is an additional setting that can affect the Start Date of tasks. It is called “Start on New Day”. It is important that…
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Every construction management software is different, but every construction team is different. Some systems are optimal for large teams while others are optimal for small teams. Regardless of the solution you choose, it’s important to know when to cut the cord and move on. Too many construction professionals come to us after they have spent…
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