Updating projects with activities linked to other projects.

Question

Im kind of new at this. I am working on a project with several contracts. i am thinking of setting up each contract as a separate project in an EPS and linking the milestones in all the projects to create a master schedule. On a weekly basis i recieve schedule updates from the contractors. What im wondering is if there is a way i can copy the new schedule in with all the updates without having to re-link all the activities everytime I get an updated schedule? also is this the best way to create a master schedule?

Answer 1

*794503,*
It sounds like your sub projects (contracts) are in sort of a design on the go mode?
To make things a little more manageable I would suggest that you establish a set of standard start and finish milestones for each project in order for you to be able to ensure that your master project major milestones (hopefully integrated with your cost or earned value milestones) remain logically tied to those designated sub project milestones.
With that said, I would just paste the new edition of each contract's schedule into their respective projects. I would make an export (.XER) backup before pasting any new data. It's better to be safe than sorry!
Be mindful of the fact that you probably need to make sure that the logic ties gets pasted by not clicking the box (Relationships / Only between copied activities) on the "Copy Act. Options" dialog box. Otherwise, you'll have to manually tie all of the logic again. A royal pain in the "A" double "S"!!
**Use a copy of the latest project/contract schedule update and as a baseline. Format your bars to also display that baseline schedule on row #2. Also insert a schedule variance column to display date changes between your original vs. newly updated schedule. For analysis of changes.....maybe build a new layout and filter to only display those act's that have major date changes (sched. variances)?
**Another tool to use after the fact would be *"Claim Digger"* in order to analyze the details of what changes were made with each new schedule update.
There is no way to eliminate all of the manual work. :(    Some manual verification will always have to be performed.
It would be very smart to get a good grip on how you'll handle these changes early in the project before the situation gets out of hand.
For every "schedule change" made to your schedule the chance of a scheduling error increases. So there you go.
Good luck and let me know how it turns out.