Increasing the potential application of Microsoft project and Primavera P6 for project management: A comparative analysis of the residential project

Abstract

Change during the management of construction projects has been observed due to raised complexities, changes in work orders, change in client requirements and much more sudden and natural reasons. A large number of paperwork is required for planning and scheduling work, which complicates project management. There are lots of software related to planning, scheduling, controlling, and project management in the market to make complicated manual work easier. The current study emphasizes on application of Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project (MSP) for project handling and management. Complexities during the life cycle of the project have been observed, starting from pre-construction planning to schedule the activity sequence, defining labour duties, selecting of construction methods, and assigning resources and responsibilities to the players involved in the work. In this research, A case study of a residential project has been chosen. The costing and scheduling of the project were calculated by using primavera P6 and Microsoft Project. After a detailed study and comparative analysis of scheduling and cost with Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project show very minor differences. The total Project duration in MSP is 93 days and in primavera 87 days. Similarly, after cost comparison analysis by using both techniques, the result shows that using MSP total project cost was 13,34,345 Rs. and in primavera 13,82,573 Rs. After observing the detailed tools of both the software it can be concluded that there is not much difference between both the software parameters. But the application of MSP is much user friendly compared to Primavera. And in countries like India still the application of software base project handling is done for larger construction projects only. For smaller works project managers still limit the use of various software. Both software has some different features for different types of project management-related tasks. This research aims to highlight the positive insights of both tools for the projects. The findings of this research also showcase that for small, medium, and large scale construction requirements of software tool changes and so its effectiveness also.