Hi, I have very good question form one Blog reader: “Hello Nenad. I found your website while trying to solve a very particular problem in MS Project. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a solution and was hoping that you could help. I have a task that is 18 days in duration called Lab Testing. This task is automatically scheduled so that any delay’s to the previous task will push this task out. The Lab will be shut down for 1 month in September, but our task is currently scheduled to finish before then. However, if we encounter delays to our schedule, it is possible that we will have 8 days prior to the lab shutting down and then will have to complete the 10 days after it opens back up. Is there anyway to schedule this such that the Lab Testing schedule will “float” or “adjust” itself around the fixed Lab Shutdown dates, so that the total amount of testing time (18 days) is the same?”

I will show the solution, using MS PROJECT 2019.

In this solution I will NOT use Lab as resource, and I will use Task Calendar.

Here is Scenario:

Now, let’s say that in March 2019, Lab is going to be shutdown, and Task need Lab cannot be done in this period.

First I will going to create Lab shutdown Calendar:

and:

Now I will apply this new calendar to the Task:

Now, lets say that Task 1 is 100% completed, and Task need Lab has 8 days actual work:

and:

and:

and I will get:

Let’s say that this is all work done until 28.02.2019 (end of February). I will move uncompleted part after that date like this:

and:

and I will get:

The rest of Task need Lab is here:

Of course, another way is to create Lab as Resource, and put in it’s calendar March as exceptions. but in that case that Resource should be assigned to that Task, and work is calculated in hours as well.

Hop this helps.

Regards!