Resource Curve and Percentage Completion

In Primavera actual progress is reported by Performance % Complete, both for the Activities and WBS Elements. A performance % Complete of the Activities under the same WBS Element is calculated by one of these six options:

1. By Activity % Complete and with resource curves
2. By Activity % Complete and without resource curves
3. By WBS Milestones
4. By 0/100 method
5. By 50/50 method
6. By x/(100-x) custom method

Option no 1. and .2 are continuous and the remainder of them are for milestone progresses. Go to earned value tab in WBS details pane to set the method.

A recent refinery project of mine doesn't come with resource curve due to the instruction of Project Managers. This is despite the advice of planners the importance of having resource curve rather than having uniform or linear distribution across the activities.

Let me paint the illustration below. (Source : Percent Complete Field by by Nader Khorrami Rad, PMP).

The right graph is a uniform or linear whereas the left one is non-linear.There’s a four day long activity with actual duration of two (the red line shows the Data Date) and with 300$ BAC.

1st Option (left)

(Activity % Complete, without resource curves), with a % Complete Type of Duration, the Duration % Complete would be 50% {=2 days/4 days}.

Activity % Complete would be equal to the Duration % Complete and Performance % Complete would be equal to the Activity % Complete; in other words, Performance % Complete would
also be 50%.

The EV of the Activities in Options 1 would be Performance % Complete * BAC, which makes it 150$ for both cases, regardless of the resource curves. The PV would be simply calculated by the curves, and it would be 240$ for the left case and 150$ for the right case.

As you can see despite the Budget at completion and Earn Value is the same but Plan Value is different for both cases. It is important for project managers and planner to aware of the earn value concept.

PV = BAC * Schedule % Complete
EV = BAC * Performance % Complete

In the 1st case as you can see the Schedule % complete is 80% while the Performance % Complete is 50 % . This will yield delay for about 30%.

In second case, you will see both Schedule % complete is 50% and the Performance % Complete is 50%. This shows your project progress in on track.

Hence, it is important for you to set the resource curve either by Future Bucket Planning or Assign a resource curve.