Resources

Resources

An introduction to resource management in Safran Project

Resources are an essential element to accurate project control. You can use Safran Project without assigning resources to activities, severely limiting your reporting capabilities.

Without assigning resources, you are restricted to time progress (% complete) only, which is the actual time spent on the activity compared with the planned time, regardless of how much work has been completed and how many hours have been spent to complete that work.

For example, if an activity has a planned duration of 10 days and two days have elapsed since it started, it will be considered 20% complete. On its own, this figure is not helpful for most industry projects.

By assigning resources to your activities, you can generate far more complex and valuable progress reports based on the principles of the earned value method.

In Safran Project, there are two types of resources: Quantity and Cost. Each activity can be assigned multiple resources of either cost or quantity.

Quantity resources

Quantity resources represent a measurable and repeatable value. They are often used to track man-hours, but they could also be used to track other quantifiable measures, for example, meters of pipe or m3 of concrete.

You can also add cost as unit rates to quantity resources to improve cost tracking and reporting. For example, you may create two quantity resources, Management and Technical, to plan, track and report man-hours. You could then assign a unit rate to each resource, for example, $400 to the management and $250 to the Technical resources.

Cost resources

A cost resource is a monetary value assigned to an activity, typically a cost of materials or similar.

Safran Project supports Complex Rates, allowing the user, through the resource setup window, to specify how the rates change based on specific criteria.

Adding resources manually

Open the resource view in the information area (VIEW > Information > Resource). Once the resource view is open, you can edit resource information for the selected activity. To add a new resource, go to HOME > Rows > Insert and select Insert resource.

A new resource line is created for the selected activity, and you can set resource type, planned quantity, planned cost, unit rate and more.

Setting a default resource for QTY and Cost resources in PROJECT > User Settings is also possible. When you have set a default QTY resource, you can add a column for Planned QTY in the Barchart Editor and add resources to activities directly in the Barchart Editor. Doing so will automatically create a new line in the resource view using the amount you put in the column and the resource type you selected in User Settings. This can be a timesaving method if you usually use one quantity type resource for man-hours.

Adding resources by importing from a text file

Importing from a text file is helpful if your resource assignments are kept elsewhere, for example, in a spreadsheet or bespoke work package system. It enables you to import all resource assignments simultaneously and avoid the tedious option of entering each resource one at a time.

The text file must adhere to a tab-separated format with specific headers to import resource assignments. The easiest way to prepare the file is by using Excel and saving it as a tab-separated text file. For more details on this process, see the Explore Safran Project document. The import itself is done via FILE > Import > Resources.