280 Part 4: Updating and Managing the Schedule

Updating Baselines

As a project progresses, certain types of project data are likely to change. When a project is in progress and data changes, the original baseline you created for the project will not accurately measure performance against the current project. Likewise, creating a new baseline may not yield accurate results for measuring performance because some data will change during the life of the project that should be measured against the original project data.

For example, changes to any of the following data types can affect results when comparing a project to its baseline:

•added/dropped activities

•modified activity data including dates, costs, resources, steps, documents, notebooks, relationships, codes, expenses, and userdefined fields

•modified project-level data including details, documents, risks, issues, thresholds, calendars, and codes

Using Primavera’s Update Baseline utility, you can update the original baseline plan with new activity, resource/role assignment, and project data. When updating a baseline, you can choose to update all activities or you can apply a filter to update activities that meet the filter’s criteria. You can also specify the types of data to update.

You can only update one baseline at a time. You must have the

Update Project Baselines project privilege to update a baseline.

Update a project baseline To update a baseline, open the project that contains the data you want to add to the baseline. Choose Project, Maintain Baselines. Select the baseline you want to update. Click Update.

Select the project-level data you want to update. Choose to update all activities or select a filter to only update activities that meet the filter’s criteria. Choose to add new activities from the current project, delete activities no longer in the current project, and/or update existing activities. If you choose to update existing activities, click Update Options to select the types of activity and resource/role assignment data you want to update. To save the results of the baseline update to a file (including errors and warnings), enter a pathname or select a file. After selecting options, click Update. When the update is complete, click View Log to view the results of the update.

Primavera - Project Management

Managing Baselines 281

Primavera - Project Management

282 Part 4: Updating and Managing the Schedule

Ensuring Baseline Data Is Updated

When you update a baseline, the module stores the date on which the baseline was last updated. You can view this date in the Last Update Date field of the Maintain Baselines dialog box. The module does not consider the last update date when you choose the Ignore Last Update Date option in the Update Baseline dialog box.

Primavera recommends that you select the Ignore Last Update Date option if you plan to update different data types at different times (i.e., you will not simply be updating all baseline data each time). If you do not select this option, some data types may not be updated from the correct date when you run the baseline update.

For example:

■On June 1st, you run a baseline update that includes activity steps.

■On June 8th, you run a baseline update that does NOT include activity steps.

■On June 15th, you run a baseline update that includes activity steps. You do not select the Ignore Last Update Date option.

Given this scenario, when you run the baseline update on June 15th, activity steps are only updated from June 8th because the baseline is updated from the last update date. If you select the Ignore Last Update Date option, all changes to activity steps are updated regardless of the date the baseline was last updated.

Primavera - Project Management