Calendars shift work (Microsoft Project 2003)

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I have some mining clients who work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The shifts go from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM and 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Does anyone have any brilliant ideas for coping with this situation really well as they always seem to have problems? I have stressed the importance of matching the hours in Tools, Options, Calendar with Tools, Change Working Time but they still seem to have difficulty with the night shift workers. I am attaching a doc giving a screen shot of the default night shift times and two of my own suggested day and night shift times. Is this the best way to be doing this? The day shift is fine because it is always on the one actual day but the issue seems to be that the clients can’t cope with the fact that the night shift crosses two days, so while they think in terms of night through to morning, they really need to be thinking of what day it is. Thus on any given actual day … say a Tuesday … they firstly work from 12:00 AM to 6:00 AM and then again from 6:00 PM to midnight. Hope you can follow this and I look forward to any hints and thoughts.

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I had to work with worldwide teams in different time zones with different holiday and working schedules for a project I was assigned to. I used the 24 hour calendar as a base calendar for each named time zone, and assigned the team members appropriate calendars. I also used the 24 hour calendar with a standard 8 hour work day for the Project Base Calendar. I think what you are already doing is an accurate solution, this is just another way that might give you some ideas.

Carla

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Thanks Carla. I think one of the issues for them is getting the right people onto the right roster also. The only thing I can think of is to have two listings in the resource sheet if we are using generic names. For instance Electricians Night and Electricians Day and then have, say, 200% in each. Then create a night calendar and day calendar (as per the sample I sent) and put one or the other to the appropriate resource as their base calendar. The only other thing I can think of is to list the resources by their actual names and adjust their own calendars under Change Working Times to reflect their exact roster, which could cope with their swapping from day to night shift. Much more time consuming but …

Any thoughts on this?

Many thanks.

Suzanna

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I don’t see any way out of the crossing days issue even though they are working the one night shift, it does cross the two days. The 24hr calendar may help as suggested by Carla, but it won’t solve the crossing day issue. They will just have to adjust as you say, to “days”.

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Thanks very much Gary.

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