What is the difference between adding a lot of activities to your schedule and making one activity that includes the several types of required work and calling it an activity step? And which is better, steps or lots of activities?
This article explores the concept of Activity Steps in Primavera P6, highlighting their importance in achieving detailed project oversight and providing comparisons.
Defining Activity Steps
Activity steps provide a way to break activities down into smaller units and track the completion of those units.
For example, you can choose to have an activity named “RC Columns” and include shuttering, steel fixing, pouring, and de-shuttering in the steps.
The alternative to doing this is to create an activity for each type of work. To create activities efficiently, you can check out our intermediate planning course.
Difference between activity step and activities
When should shuttering, steel fixing, pouring, and de-shuttering be made as activities, and when should they be made as steps in an activity named “RC Columns?”
We use activity steps when we don’t know the exact date and the relationship that should be made. To avoid placing an inaccurate duration and relationship, we can place it as a step in the main activity. This only applies to activities that help in producing the final product (sub-activities), not main activities.
For example: mobilization activity includes providing utilities to the site and installing caravans and offices on-site. Those are sub-activities from the mobilization which is the main activity. The duration of mobilization activity is usually mentioned in the contract as an overall activity but not for each part of it.
We can place them as main activities or make them sub-activities (steps) in the mobilization activity. The criteria to choose will be as follows:
1- Do we know the exact dates for this activity?
2- Are those activities major activities that need to be tracked?
3- Do we know the sequence of them with each other or can they start at any time during the mobilization period?
If the answers are
1- No, we don’t know the exact date and their relationships does not define the start.
2- They are not main activities that need to be tracked nor have cost resources assigned to them.
3- They do not depend on each other any of them can start within the mobilization period assigned in the contract.
Then choose to make them as sub-activities (steps) to the mobilization.
If the answers are
1- We know the dates and the relationships around this activity will make us define time more easily.
2- They are major activities and need to be tracked.
3- We established a sequence that we want to follow.
Then choose to make them main activities with durations and relationships.
You can use the steps in other detailed activities, the use of RC Column here to make it easier to understand the concept.
Some planners might create an activity for furniture and then add steps to it that include (mirrors, trash bins, etc.) to be more precise while updating.
The previous answers are not standard. If you have different answers, you should choose what better suits your project.
How to use the activity step?
1- You first need to change the calculations of the project to consider the steps in the progress.
2- You need to change the “% complete type” of the activities that will include steps to physical.
3- In this example, we will use “RC Column” to explain the activity steps. We added “shuttering, steel fixing, concrete pouring, and de-shuttering” as steps. We then need to decide the weight of each of them.
4- The “Step Weight” is your estimation of this activity. In this example, we assumed that the step weight is out of 8. So, we gave the shuttering 2 out of 8. Primavera P6 will understand after you finish placing the “Step Weight” and will provide the “Step Weight Percent”.
5- You can then start updating your schedule. Let us assume that we have finished fixing the steel, and the shuttering is now 80%.
We will go to the activity and from the steps tab we will add those percentages in “Step % Complete.”
6- And finally, after running your schedule, you will find the progress normally in the “Performance % Complete”. The 70% here represents 100% of the steel fixing which is 50% of the entire activity and the 80% of the shuttering which is 20% of the entire activity.
Conclusion
In summary, Activity Steps allow planners to break down complex tasks into smaller, actionable units, providing greater visibility and control over project execution. By defining and tracking steps within an activity, project teams can monitor progress with remarkable granularity, ensuring that no detail is overlooked.
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