Making Mass Changes To A WBS Doesn't Have To Be Daunting

I have been involved in scheduling a turnaround recently, and I was assigned the task of making changes to the existing Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). One of the changes consisted of adding a repetitive new element to existing nodes of the WBS. I started this task by utilizing the features in Primavera that add and indent elements to a WBS, including the add plus sign and the navigation arrows on the Move tool bar.

You might think this is the best and safest way to do this, but this task can be very time consuming. Imagine that you had a complex project that required the addition of thousands of activities; how long do you think this task would take you?

Finally, I decided to try Emerald’s P6 Loader. This tool gives the user the ability to import and export data to and from Microsoft Excel while maintaining the same reliability that Primavera offers in its data movement and vastly increasing the speed.

I started with the P6-Loader tool by following these four simple steps:

1. I extracted the WBS information into Excel.

   

2. Once I received the extracted excel file I did the required changes directly in Excel and saved.

   

3. The next step was to choose the file I modified in Excel and upload it back to Primavera using the P6 Loader.

   

4. Last but not least, I refreshed Primavera and confirmed that the changes were made.

   

Looking back at this process, I can say that this tool was able to reduce my data entry time by saving me from a seemingly never-ending task had I attempted to complete it the traditional way. My statistics show that if I were to do this task directly in Primavera it would have taken me approximately 60 minutes to add 90 new elements but with the P6-Loader it took me only fifteen minutes. Both methodologies are safe and obtain the same results, but the real question is which of the two will streamline my work?