Primavera P6 Planning and Project Controls Training Course

Course overview

Projects lose control when the approved programme is not built as a logic-driven, resource-aware baseline that can be updated consistently. Project planners and controls staff are often expected to turn scope, estimates, procurement dates and construction or delivery constraints into reliable Primavera P6 schedules, then explain forecast movement to project managers and clients. This course addresses that operational gap: participants learn to build schedules that support decisions, not simply produce Gantt charts.

Over five days, participants use Primavera P6 Professional to create EPS and OBS structures, develop WBS-based schedules, define calendars, create activities, assign logic, apply constraints appropriately, and identify critical and near-critical paths. They load labour and non-labour resources, establish cost accounts, create and maintain baselines, update progress, analyse variances, calculate earned value measures, and produce management-ready reports. The course also covers schedule quality checks, coding structures, layouts, filters, grouping, and reporting practices that make programme data usable across a project team.

Teaching is centred on a realistic capital-project case study. Each participant builds and controls a complete P6 project file through sequenced demonstrations, guided configuration tasks, planning workshops and progress-update scenarios. By the end of the course, participants leave with a structured baseline programme, resource and cost assignments, an updated data date schedule, variance analysis outputs, and a project controls reporting pack they can adapt to their own work environment.

The course is designed for professionals who already understand the basic language of projects and now need practical command of Primavera P6 for planning, monitoring and reporting. It is equally valuable for managers approving training because it establishes a more disciplined basis for forecasting dates, assessing delay exposure, allocating resources and escalating material schedule risks.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Configure an EPS, OBS, project calendar and WBS structure in Primavera P6 Professional
• Build a logic-linked activity schedule using relationships, leads, lags, milestones and appropriate constraints
• Calculate and interpret critical path, total float and near-critical activities using P6 schedule views
• Assign labour, non-labour and material resources with rates, roles, units and cost accounts
• Create an approved baseline and compare current schedules against baseline dates, durations and costs
• Update a project to a defined data date using actuals, remaining durations, physical progress and forecast logic
• Perform schedule quality checks for open ends, excessive constraints, negative float, long durations and invalid logic
• Produce management-ready layouts, filters, dashboards and variance reports from Primavera P6 data

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Project Planners and Schedulers — who must develop, update and defend integrated project programmes
• Project Controls Engineers — who need reliable P6 data for forecasting, reporting and performance measurement
• Project Managers — who need to challenge schedule assumptions and act on critical-path risks
• Planning Engineers — who translate scope, quantities and delivery constraints into workable activity networks
• Construction Managers — who need visibility of sequencing, resource demand and short-term programme impacts
• PMO and Portfolio Analysts — who consolidate schedule data and require consistent coding and reporting structures

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand basic project-management concepts, including scope breakdown, milestones, activity durations, dependencies, critical path and progress reporting. Prior experience reading a Gantt chart or working with a project schedule is expected. Familiarity with Microsoft Excel is useful for reviewing tabular data and importing or exporting schedule information. Participants do not need prior Primavera P6 experience, programming knowledge, advanced earned value expertise or a formal project-management qualification. This is an intermediate course because it moves quickly from P6 navigation into schedule construction, updating, analysis and controls practice rather than teaching project-management fundamentals.

Training methodology

The course combines instructor-led explanation with continuous work in Primavera P6 Professional. Short demonstrations are followed by guided build exercises in which participants configure a project, create activity logic, load resources and establish a baseline. A running capital-project case study introduces progress updates, delayed procurement, changed productivity and completion-date pressure. Participants review each other’s schedule logic, use filters and layouts to investigate exceptions, and produce decision-focused reports. The final session includes an application-planning workshop to map the methods, templates and controls to participants’ own projects.

Course outline

Day 1: P6 Foundations and Programme Structure

• Primavera P6 Professional interface, projects window and activity views
• Enterprise Project Structure and organisational breakdown structure configuration
• Project creation, project codes and responsible-manager assignment
• Work Breakdown Structure design for control accounts and reporting
• Global, project and resource calendars with working-time exceptions
• Activity types, duration types and milestone selection
• Activity codes, user-defined fields and coding dictionaries

Workshop: Participants configure a new P6 project for the case study and produce an EPS, WBS, calendar and activity-code structure.

Day 2: Logic-Driven Schedule Development

• Activity definition from scope packages, deliverables and control milestones
• Finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-start and start-to-finish relationships
• Leads, lags and relationship logic versus date constraints
• Mandatory, start-on and finish-on constraints and their scheduling consequences
• Critical path method calculations, total float and free float
• Longest path analysis and near-critical path identification
• Schedule quality checks for open ends, long activities and excessive constraints

Workshop: Participants build a fully logic-linked design, procurement and delivery programme, then produce a schedule-quality exception list.

Day 3: Resources, Costs and Baseline Planning

• Resource dictionaries, roles and resource hierarchy in P6
• Labour, non-labour and material resource assignments
• Units, rates, curves and duration-type effects on resource calculations
• Resource availability, maximum units and over-allocation review
• Cost accounts, expense items and activity cost assignment
• Baseline creation, baseline types and baseline assignment
• Resource and cost loading checks before baseline approval

Workshop: Participants resource-load selected work packages, assign cost data and create an approved baseline for the case-study programme.

Day 4: Progress Updating and Project Controls Analysis

• Data date selection and disciplined status-cycle preparation
• Updating actual starts, actual finishes and remaining durations
• Physical percent complete, duration percent complete and units percent complete
• Progress overrides, retained logic and actual-date scheduling options
• Baseline variance analysis for dates, durations, costs and quantities
• Earned value fields including PV, EV, AC, SPI and CPI
• Forecast completion analysis and corrective-action scenario testing

Workshop: Participants update the delayed case-study project to a new data date and produce a variance narrative with recommended corrective actions.

Day 5: Reporting, Governance and Applied Controls

• Layouts, columns, grouping, sorting and saved user views
• Filters for critical activities, late starts, negative float and upcoming milestones
• Activity usage profiles, resource histograms and S-curves
• P6 reports, print settings and export to Microsoft Excel
• Schedule narrative content and executive dashboard design
• Baseline-change governance, update calendars and audit trails
• Contractor schedule review and time-impact analysis principles

Workshop: Participants create a management reporting pack containing a critical-path view, milestone report, resource profile, variance summary and control-action log.

Tools & standards covered

Oracle Primavera P6 Professional, Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM, Microsoft Excel, PMI Practice Standard for Scheduling

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions