Hi,

In this blog I will demonstrate how can you set up different resource Availability to the same resource in MS PROJECT 2010.

I will repeat “setup” from my previous blog.

First I will add two tasks.

TASK 1 will have 5 days duration and it will start at 16.06.2011 and it will finish at 22.06.2011. TASK 2 will have 10 days duration and it will start at 04.07.2011 and it will finish at 15.07.2011.

Now I will add two resources in the Resource sheet:

Finally I will Set up different Availability to each resource. I should open Resource table if I want to do that. I will choose RESOURCE 1 and I will make him available from 01.06.2011 to 20.06.2011 with 100% units (availability), and from 21.06.2011 to 30.06.2011 with 50% units (availability):

That means that RESOURCE 1 will be available only from 01.06.2011 to 30.06.2011 and he will work full time job until 20.06.2011, and part time job (4 hours) from 21.06.2011 to 30.06.2011

Now, I will choose RESOURCE 2 and I will make him available from 01.07.2011 to 10.07.2011 with 50% units (availability), and from 11.07.2011 to 15.07.2011 with 100% units (availability):

That means that RESOURCE 2 will be available only from 01.07.2011 to 15.06.2011 and he will work part time job (4 hours) from 01.07.2011 to 10.07.2011, and full time job from 11.07.2011 to 20.06.2011.

O.K. Now I will assign RESOURCE 2 to the TASK 1:

and I will get:

You can see little “RED MAN” in status column. It means that RESOURCE 2 is over allocated. If you open Team planner you will get:

RESOURCE 2 is over allocated from  16.06.2011 to 22.06.2011 because he is available from 01.07.2011 to  15.07.2011. If you open Resource usage sheet you will also see that over allocation:

What can I do with over allocation? First I can leave it: “AS IS”. It means that RESOURCE 2 will work 8 hours even it is not available. Or I can right click on status column and I will get:

I will choose Fix in Task Inspector  and I will get:

You can see the warning message in the upper left corner of the Task Inspector. It says: “Resource assigned in nonworking time _ PRESOURCE 2”. If you don’t want to leave this over allocation “AS IS” you can only choose “Reschedule Task”. I will do and and I will get:

Something is a little bit strange here, isn’t it? I get Duration = 8 days, Start date = 16.06.2011, and End date = 12.07.2011. Let’s look at the Team Planner View:

Here you can see that RESOURCE 2 will actually start with work at 01.07.2011 and it will finish at 12.07.2011. Why? Because RESOURCE 2 is available from 01.07.2011 to 15.07.2011. We needed initially 5 days for the Task (5 days X 8 hours / day = 40 hours)

Now look at the Resource Usage sheet:

RESURCE 2  is available from 01.07.2011 to 10.07.2011 with 50% units (availability), and from 11.07.2011 to 15.07.2011 with 100% units (availability), remember?

So work schedule for RESOURCE 2 will be:

01.07.2011 –> 4 hours + 04.07.2011 –> 4 hours + 05.07.2011 –> 4 hours + 06.07.2011 –> 4 hours + 07.07.2011 –> 4 hours + 08.07.2011 –> 4 hours + 11.07.2011 –> 8 hours + 12.07.2011 –> 8 hours = 40 hours!

If you were following my example you can try it with TASK “2 and RESOURCE 2.

For the end, be EXTREMELLY CAREFULL when you are using different availability for the resources, because you can get in the trouble if you are not 100% sure what are you doing.

In my next blog I will show how to apply different and multiple pay rates for a Resource

See you!