Primavera 3p or Suretrak, input needed

[FattyCBR]

I've always used MS project, but my company is starting a job that requires either of the two above so that the schedule of values can be tracked by completion of tasks.

Does anyone have any input on either of the two?

Thanks

[DJSapp]

Primavera was recently acquired by Oracle, and I'm not sure if they even offer P3 anymore. Your options would be suretrak or P6, and P6 would be able to easily do what you need, and a whole lot more. You're looking at around $3k for the software, licence and maintenance for P6.

From what I've heard, suretrak is a bit easier than p6 but I've never used it, so I don't know if it can do what you need.

[Sierra Cement]

Suretrack is the easiest move from microsoft project. P3-P9 is much more user friendly than ever before, but really seems best suited for someone who is purely a scheduler and can capture the full potential. If you are a jack of all trades that needs to do some scheduling from time to time, then I would go with Suretrack. Linking costs to schedule activities can be done fairly simply on Suretrack. However, depending on your type of project it can be quite elaborate and requires a high level of understanding on the relationship between costs and schedule activities. When cost allocation is based on schedule updates, then a poorly written schedule can ultimately hold up (or pay out too much) monies if it inaccurately reflects the actual costs spent prior to the activity occuring. I.E. often an activity may only be 50% complete on the schedule when in actuality the cost acrued for that activity is more like 75%. In instances like this the schedule can work against you. Depending on your situation, you can always front load your schedule and make it work for you too. You would definitely want an entire section of the schedule related to material procurement....you probably know all of this already....sorry for the ramble.

Not knowing your situation, I would suggest Suretrack as your tool. Suretrack automatically kicks out a % complete for each activity when you update the schedule. So if an activity with a 20 day original duration is updated to 10 days for remaining duration, Suretrack will automatically calculate this as 50% complete. So updating is really done with a commen sense approach (a manager thinking how many days left ILO trying to quantify if they are 30%, 40% or 50% complete. The software does the math for you). Without getting overly elaborate this is a simple tool that can be used to calculate your % complete on the cost side too. You can input costs and resources into Suretrack easily. Then when you update the schedule, you will see the following: if an activity is worth $100k and is updated to 40% complete, then it will tell you the cost completed to date is $40k. I don't personally use suretrack for those functions in my line of work, but if it is a requirement of your job then it can be done fairly simply. I can't stress enough the importance of setting up the schedule properly intially. Because every update is only as good as the baseline.....this is the same whether it is micrsoft project or a suretrack / primavera software.
Good luck!

[FattyCBR]

Thanks for the info guys, it looks like Suretrak is what we'll get, both from the $ perspective and ease of use.