“Ace Your Primavera Job Interviews”
Interview Questions & Answers
For Planning Engineers
Question No.1:
What is the reasonable range of float you assume while checking the look ahead work activities?
Ans: The float range is varied from a project to another. However, in my opinion 10% of project duration is the maximum reasonable float for any project.
Question No.2:
What is the Critical Path? How you identify it and if any activity having negative slack, how can you adjust the duration?
Ans: Critical path is usually the activities on the longest path with zero float. Any delay on these activities will lead to delay in project duration. Usually critical activities are shown in red color or say zero float in columns. For reducing duration you can adjust it by reducing the duration or changing the relationship between activities.
However, planning engineer should pay attention to maximum resources (resources constrains) while crashing the critical path.
Negative slack is usually results from constrains in the activities. Planning Engineer should follow up the negative float path and find the wrong relationships or constrains and fix it.
Question No.3:
What is the difference between Planning & Scheduling Engineer?
Ans: Planning Engineer can work along with the project team to develop a complete time schedule including cost of resources. Planning Engineer can lead the team and influence his/her point of view.
Scheduling Engineer can only follow senior planning engineer or project manager instructions to create logic between project activities, but s/he can’t develop the time schedule alone.
Question No.4:
What is the difference between recovery schedule and revised schedule?
Ans: Recovery schedule keeps the same finish date with some corrective actions to recover the delay such as add more resources and break down some activities and so on… Revised schedule we have a new finish date because of claims or adding a new scope of work (amendment).
Question No.5:
How can you define the Critical Path in primavera?
Ans: Simply filter the activities with Zero Total Float.
Question No.6:
How can you differentiate total float and free float?
Ans: Total float represents the number of days that can be delayed without affecting the completion of the project, whereas free float determines the number of days that can be delayed without affecting the successor activity
Question No.7:
What is the difference between recovery plan and revised plan?
Ans: Recovery plan is made with acceleration to remain within contractual completion date but revised plans accounts for change order which may or may not be within contractual dates
Question No.8:
What is a Baseline?
Ans: Baseline is the value or condition against which all future measurements will be compared. The baseline is a point of reference. In project management there are three baselines – schedule baseline, cost baseline and scope baseline.
Question No.9:
What is difference between crashing and fast tracking?
Ans: There are basically two techniques that can be used to shorten the project duration while maintaining the project scope. These techniques are fast tracking and crashing.
Crashing is the process of adding resources to one’s project so as to be able to finish it faster. It has cost impact. Fast Tracking, on the other hand, is the process of performing tasks in parallel so as to be able to finish the project sooner. It does not have any cost impact, but
increases the risks.
Question No.10:
What is the difference between free float and total float?
Ans: Total float is the amount of time that an activity can be delayed without delaying the project completion date. On a critical path, the total float is zero.
Free float is the amount of time that an activity can be delayed without delaying the Early Start of its successor activity.
Question No.11:
Define critical path:
Ans: A critical path is the sequence of project network activities which add up to the longest overall duration, regardless if that longest duration has float or not. This determines the shortest time possible to complete the project.
Question No.12:
What is the normal total float allowed for a new project?
Ans:Total float should be not greater than 10% duration of the total project duration. (This percentage is subjective)
Question No.13:
What are the duties of a planner?
Ans: Assigned in overall/master schedule, look-ahead targets, and accomplishment
reports and monitoring.
Question No.14:
What is Baseline Program?
Ans: An agreed Program that use to compare the actual result to measure performance of project or product against what was planned.
Question No.15:
What does it means If my free float is positive?
Ans: It means I can delay this activity without delaying the project end date.
Question No.16:
What is an S–Curve?
Ans: S-curve is a graph showing cumulative cost or value (measured in terms of money or man-hours) against time.
Question No.17:
What is needed for a successful project plan?
Ans: Contract document, drawings, B.O.Q as primary & other planning tools as secondary support. Furthermoe, the involvement of project team in the planning, estimation, and sequence of work would result more accurate project plan.
Question No.18:
What is a milestone? What are the types of milestone?
Ans: A milestone is an event. Activity-driven milestones are usually entered into PM software as activities with durations of zero. Since milestones have no duration, once they are reached they are immediately in the past. It is therefore good practice to name activities using the past participle of the verb (i.e., “Test component” = activity; “Component tested” = milestone.