Task Calendar/Holiday Override?

Copper Contributor

I have a task for "Construction" which is 10 calendar weeks long on average. I created a "Monday Start" Task Calendar that has Monday as the only working times for the "Construction" task. I did this to force "Construction start" to always start on a Monday. However, I also added in Memorial Day as one of my calendar exceptions since it is a non-working holiday. My problem is now that anytime I have a project where construction occurs during May, I lose the entire the work week. How can I modify it so that construction resumes the Tuesday after Memorial Day if I have a Monday only work task Calendar? Is that possible? I know I can add a separate task before construction start and apply the Monday only calendar but I was hoping to be able to handle it with one task instead of 2.  I do not want to add a constraint if possible. I'd like to find a way for Project to auto schedule this for me. Thanks,

Amanda

4 Replies

@ajaffke 

You say calendar weeks but I don't think that is what your really mean. Ten calendar weeks would be 10ew in the Duration field but task calendars don't apply to tasks with elapsed duration.

 

Aside from that, even if you create a separate task with the "Monday only" task calendar as a predecessor to the construction task, you will have the exact same issue. That predecessor task will cause the week of Memorial day to be skipped.

 

Okay, here what you can do. For any holiday that occurs on a Monday, set up a Tuesday exception. Keep in mind that calendar "exceptions" can be working or non-working, it depends on how it's set up. Here is how I would set up the working exception for the Tuesday after Memorial day. Set up the exception and double click on it to bring up the sub-window to make it a working day.

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But if you want a 10 calendar week construction task you will still need two separate tasks, one for the Monday only predecessor and the other the the 10 elapsed week construction. (I tried to insert another screen shot but the forum edit function is not cooperating so I had to attach the screen shot as a file).

 

Hope this helps.

John

@John-project 

Thank you, the Tuesday exception worked perfectly. However, I am confused about your first comment. And I don't know what the "ew" means after 10.

 

"You say calendar weeks but I don't think that is what your really mean. Ten calendar weeks would be 10ew in the Duration field but task calendars don't apply to tasks with elapsed duration"

 

Construction is 10 weeks long (M-F work week) thus making it 10 calendar weeks, correct? If I have a Monday task calendar applied, my construction duration actually becomes 11 days; if I have this set up correctly!? The construction task would technically end the Friday before on 10/21 but I am still trying to figure out how to make that work too.

 

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John,
Sorry, I missed your last comment in the thread before I replied. I am new to Project but I don't think I need to add "e" to my durations. I do not want it to disregard the Sat/Sun non working times I have set in my task calendars. Am I understanding the "e" correctly?

@ajaffke 

In Project terms 10 calendar weeks is 10-7 day weeks (i.e. Sunday through Saturday). To achieve that users can enter an elapsed time in the Duration field (10ew or 10 elapsed weeks). What you want is 10 working weeks which is the standard M-F workweek. Entering a value of 10w in the Duration field gives 10 work weeks.

 

I'm confused by your statement that says if you apply the Monday only calendar to your construction task, it will have an 11 day duration. Did you perhaps mean 11 weeks?

 

It's difficult to show but let me present a couple of scenarios. In the screen shot below the first construction task has the Monday only calendar applied and the duration is set as 1w. As you can see the task spans 5 weeks because Monday is the only working day, so 5 Mondays is 5 working days or 1 working week. For tasks 2 and 3, I set up a predecessor task which has the Monday only calendar. The construction task has a start-to-start link with the Monday only task which allows the construction task to start on Monday, (or Tuesday if Monday is Memorial day), and go for 1 week. The reason the Gantt display may be a little confusing is I've set the timescale to show the Monday only calendar which makes it look like the construction task is occurring on non-working days but it is not because the construction task uses the Standard calendar ("none" is default to the Project calendar) but Project only allows one calendar to be used for the timescale (a limitation).

2021-12-28_09-47-24.png

Hope this helps to clarify.

John