MS Project to Primavera P6: what to do when the contract requires P6
By Roman Bazelchuk | NEC Accredited Project Manager | APMG Project Planning and Control
Founder, NEC Planning Solutions Ltd
The tender programme was built in MS Project. The contract has been signed, and somewhere in the Scope, the Specification or the preliminaries is a line saying the programme is to be submitted in Primavera P6, often as the native file. The first programme is due on the contract's own clock, nobody on the team runs P6, and the planner who built the tender programme is asking whether an export will do.
Moving a programme from MS Project to Primavera P6 takes an import and a rebuild check, not a conversion. P6 imports Microsoft Project files saved as XML, but typed dates arrive as constraints, links on summary tasks lose their home, and durations and lags depend on calendar settings. Fix those before the first submission.
An export will produce a file. Whether it produces a programme the client's planner will accept is a different question, because the client asked for P6 so that it could open the file in its own copy, run its own checks and read the logic, not so that it could look at the same bars in a different piece of software.
This guide covers why clients require Primavera P6, where NEC4, JCT and FIDIC put that requirement and the first programme's deadline, what an import from MS Project keeps and what it loses, how to decide between converting and rebuilding, and how to set the P6 programme up for the contract it serves. Building a P6 programme for an NEC contract in depth is covered in Primavera P6 for NEC programmes, and what the Project Manager tests on submission in NEC clause 31 programme acceptance.
References are to the NEC4 Engineering and Construction Contract, the JCT Standard Building Contract 2016 and the 2017 FIDIC Red and Yellow Books. P6 means Oracle's Primavera P6 Professional, and MS Project means the Microsoft Project desktop application.
Why clients require Primavera P6
In the MS Project vs Primavera P6 comparison that matters here, both calculate a critical path from logic, so the requirement is rarely about the arithmetic. It is about the client's own process. A client that runs P6 can import the contractor's file into its own database, check the logic and float with its own tools, compare each revision with the last and roll the programme up into its own reporting. A PDF stops that at the first step, and a file from another tool has to be imported and checked before any of it can start.
Crossrail's planning and scheduling handbook, published in its learning legacy, shows the pattern. Its schedules sat in a three-level Primavera hierarchy with the contractors' schedules at the third level, its project planners worked with each contractor to issue a P6 XER file as the template to adopt, and part of the stated aim was more consistent and compatible reporting.
The native file matters for a second reason. A PDF shows the dates. The native file shows how they were calculated, which is what a reviewer needs to test whether a delay would move the finish. The Society of Construction Law's Delay and Disruption Protocol recommends that the programme is provided in its native form, not only as a PDF.
In NEC Planning Solutions' experience, P6 is widely used on major infrastructure, oil and gas, data centre and renewables projects.
Where NEC4, JCT and FIDIC set the programme software
None of the three standard forms names a software product. Each leaves the choice to the contract documents, FIDIC adds software acceptable to the Engineer where they are silent, and each sets its own timing for the first programme whatever software the client chooses. Table 1 sets out where to look and when the first programme is due.
Contract | Where the software is set | First programme due | Review |
NEC4 ECC | The Scope. Clause 31.2 requires the programme in the form the Scope states, and 31.3 lets the Project Manager refuse a programme that fails to meet the Scope | Within the period after the Contract Date that the Contract Data states, where the Contract Data identifies no programme (31.1) | Accepted, or reasons given, within two weeks of submission. If the Project Manager is late and the Contractor notifies it, a further week of silence is treated as acceptance (31.3) |
JCT SBC 2016 | Not in the form. Any requirement sits in the preliminaries or the Employer's Requirements | The master programme, as soon as possible after the contract is executed (2.9.1.2) | No acceptance step. Revised within 14 days of a decision fixing a later Completion Date or of agreeing a Pre-agreed Adjustment (2.9.2) |
FIDIC 2017 Red and Yellow | The Specification, or the Employer's Requirements in the Yellow Book. If it names none, software acceptable to the Engineer (8.3) | Within 28 days of receiving the Notice of the Commencement Date (8.3) | 21 days for the Engineer to give a Notice of non-compliance, 14 for a revision. Without one, a Notice of No-objection is deemed given (8.3) |
Table 1: where the programme software requirement sits and when the first programme is due. Amendments and particular conditions can change any of it.
The JCT Design and Build Contract 2016 has no express programme clause at all, so on a design and build job any programme requirement, P6 included, lives in the Employer's Requirements. Under every form, the content requirement does more work than the software. NEC4's clause 31.2 lists what each programme submitted for acceptance shows, from the access dates and Key Dates to float, time risk allowances and the dates the Contractor needs acceptances and information. FIDIC's Sub-Clause 8.3 sets out the content item by item, from the Commencement Date, the Time for Completion and the access dates, through the logic, float and critical path, to rest days, key delivery dates and a supporting report. The JCT master programme shows what the Contract Particulars and the preliminaries ask of it.
The detail for each contract sits in its own guide: the NEC4 programme acceptance guide, the JCT master programme and the FIDIC programme under Sub-Clause 8.3.
Read the client's document before opening either application. It names the software and often more: the release of P6, the file format, the coding structure, the calendars, the maximum activity duration and how files are named. A conversion that misses those fails the requirement as surely as one in the wrong software.
MS Project to Primavera P6: what the import keeps and loses
P6 Professional imports from MS Project through its own import wizard, and Oracle's documentation lists two formats for it: Microsoft Project XML and the older MPX, which current versions of MS Project no longer save, and not the .mpp file itself. So save the programme as XML in MS Project first. An import template then decides how the file maps: summary tasks as WBS elements or as activities, MS Project's task numbers as activity IDs or as a user-defined field, which of MS Project's baselines feeds P6's planned values, and how custom fields carry across.
Activities, durations, links and dates come across. Five things need checking before the programme goes anywhere.
Summary tasks and their links
MS Project lets a summary task carry links, and planners use them as shortcuts: the whole fit-out starts when the roof is watertight. P6 links activities, not WBS elements. Import summary tasks as WBS elements and those links have nowhere to attach. Import them as activities and each summary becomes an activity in its own right, carrying links the real work never had. Either way, move each link onto the first or last real activity it was meant to drive, then look for open ends: activities with no predecessor or no successor, which the old summary links were quietly covering.
Typed dates and constraints
In MS Project, typing a date into the Start field of an automatically scheduled task sets a Start No Earlier Than constraint, and a programme built by entering dates rather than links can carry dozens of them without anyone deciding to. They come across into P6 as Start On or After constraints. Each one holds its activity at the typed date even where its logic would let it start earlier, so the date rather than the logic drives it, and a delay to the work before it disappears into the gap until it passes that date.
That matters for money as well as time. NEC4 measures the delay from a compensation event by how far planned Completion moves (63.5), so a programme that soaks delay into typed dates can understate it. Manually scheduled tasks need the same check, because P6 schedules activities from their logic, constraints and calendars. Keep the constraints the contract gives a reason for, such as an access date, and take the rest out. Why constraints distort the analysis is set out in the constraints section of the P6 guide for NEC programmes.
Calendars and hours per day
P6 holds durations in hours and converts them to days for display with an hours-per-day factor, set once for the database or, if the administrator chooses, taken from each calendar. If MS Project counted a day as eight hours and the P6 calendar works ten, a five-day activity of 40 hours covers four ten-hour working days on that calendar and, depending on that setting, can display as four days or as five. Check that the calendars came across with the site's real working pattern and holidays, and that durations still read as the planner meant them, before anyone measures progress against them. Under FIDIC the calendar is content as well as settings: Sub-Clause 8.3 asks the programme to show the rest days and local holidays.
Lags
P6 measures every relationship lag on the one calendar its scheduling options name: the predecessor's, the successor's, a 24-hour calendar or the project default. A lag that MS Project held in elapsed days, a concrete cure for example, may not behave the same after the import. And a lag standing in for work that takes time of its own is better shown as an activity, where a reviewer can see it.
Baselines, progress and activity IDs
The import can take one of MS Project's baselines into P6's planned values, but a P6 baseline is something else: a copy of the programme, assigned so that later versions can be compared against it. Set it up in P6 once the programme the contract recognises exists. On an NEC4 job that is the Accepted Programme, because clause 63.5 assesses delay against the one in force at the dividing date.
Progress needs the same care. Actual dates come across, but P6 can calculate percent complete by duration, by units or as a physical percentage, so set the method the client reports on before the first update. And look at the activity IDs. MS Project's task numbers are row positions that change when a row is inserted, which makes them poor P6 activity IDs. Give activities IDs that mean something and do not move.
MPP to XER converters
Online converters will turn an MPP file straight into an XER. A converter changes the file format, not the programme, so the typed dates, calendars and lags need the same checks, and the links on summary tasks still need moving onto real activities. Skip the checks and the client's planner is likely to find the same problems in the first review, with the difference that they now arrive as the contractor's submission.
PLANNER'S TAKEAWAY Run P6's Check Schedule report, under the Tools menu since release 22.12, on the import and read its counts for missing logic, lags and long durations. Dates typed in MS Project are soft constraints in P6's terms, so read the soft constraints count as well as the hard one, and keep only those the contract gives a reason for. |
Convert or rebuild
Whether to convert MS Project to Primavera P6 or rebuild in P6 depends on how the MS Project programme was made. A programme that was built, with every activity linked, links on activities rather than summaries, a handful of constraints each with a reason and calendars that match the work, converts well: import it, work through the five checks, and it is ready for the contract's content. A programme that was drawn, with dates typed in and links added for appearance, does not. Importing it carries every typed date into P6, and the checks turn into a rebuild one activity at a time. Figure 1 follows a drawn programme on an NEC4 job both ways: converted as it is, or checked and rebuilt.
Two more things point to a rebuild. The first is content the contract asks for that the MS Project file never had: under NEC4, the work of the Client and Others, the access dates and the dates the Contractor needs acceptances and information (31.2), and under FIDIC, the items Sub-Clause 8.3 lists, including the logic, float and critical path and the key delivery dates for Plant and Materials. The second is a client structure, such as a WBS, coding or calendar set the Scope or Specification prescribes, which is easier to build into than to retrofit onto an imported file.
Size and time matter as well. Converting a clean, logic-linked programme is a matter of days. Rebuilding one that was drawn takes longer, because the logic is created rather than checked, and the first programme's deadline does not wait for either. Where time is short, rebuild the near-term work in detail and the later work at a coarser level, within any maximum duration the client's documents set, linked through to Completion, and refine it in the first revisions. A programme that lives in Excel rather than MS Project is a rebuild by definition, for the reasons set out in why Excel cannot run an NEC programme.
NEC Planning Solutions converts MS Project programmes into Primavera P6 for contractors whose contract now requires it: the import, the rebuild of whatever the import breaks and the content the contract asks the programme to show, issued as the native P6 file with a PDF. Conversion and rebuild start from £2,250 plus VAT, and monthly updates in P6 from £1,400 a month plus VAT. The fee and the issue date come back in writing before work starts. On one NEC3 Option A job it ran the clause 32 submissions in Primavera P6 through to completion. See specialist contractor planning support and the case study.
Setting up the P6 programme for the contract
Once the programme is in P6, build its structure around what the contract measures rather than around the old MS Project outline. The WBS puts the contract's own dates and events where the reviewer will look for them. Under NEC4 that means the Key Dates, the Completion Date, the access dates, the work of the Client and Others, and a home for each compensation event. Under FIDIC it means the Sections, the Time for Completion and the key delivery dates. Under JCT it means the Sections and the Completion Date.
Contract dates become milestones, and constraints are kept for the dates the contract fixes. Activity codes carry the commercial layer: a code for each compensation event or Variation, one for responsibility, and any codes the client's documents prescribe. Calendars follow the work, with a separate calendar for any trade or period that works to a different pattern.
Change is where the contracts part company. Under NEC4, which dropped the NEC3 wording in clause 32.1 about implemented compensation events, a revised programme can show the effect of each compensation event, implemented or not. Showing each one as its own fragnet keeps it traceable from revision to revision, while its delay is still assessed against the Accepted Programme in force at its dividing date (63.5). Under FIDIC a revision shows actual progress and any delay to it, with a supporting report setting out the significant changes from the previous programme (8.3), while the extension of time itself runs through a claim under Sub-Clause 20.2 unless it comes from a Variation. Under JCT the change reaches the master programme through the 2.9.2 revision in Table 1.
The P6 setup is the same in each case: one programme, with every change traceable from one revision to the next. What a Project Manager looks for in the result is set out in what the project manager checks when reviewing your NEC programme.
The deadline does not move with the software
Under NEC4, where the Contract Data identifies no programme, the first programme is due within the period the Contract Data states, counted from the Contract Date (31.1). Until a first programme showing the information the contract requires has been submitted, a quarter of the Price for Work Done to Date is retained (50.5), so a quick conversion that leaves out the clause 31.2 content does not release it. The Project Manager then has two weeks to accept the programme or give reasons (31.3), and a programme in a form the Scope does not allow is one it can refuse.
Under the 2017 FIDIC books the initial programme is due within 28 days of the Contractor receiving the Notice of the Commencement Date. The Engineer has 21 days to give a Notice stating where it fails to comply, and the Contractor then submits a revised programme within 14 days (8.3). A programme in software the Specification does not name invites that Notice, and every round trip uses weeks the job does not have.
Under JCT the master programme is due as soon as possible after the contract is executed (2.9.1.2). There is no acceptance step, so what follows a programme in the wrong software depends on how the preliminaries or the Employer's Requirements are written, and on how far the employer's team relies on reading the file.
COMMERCIAL CONSEQUENCE A refused first programme leaves an NEC4 job with no Accepted Programme. Where the Project Manager then assesses a compensation event itself, it works from its own view of the programme for the work still to be done (64.2), so the delay is measured on the Project Manager's plan rather than the Contractor's. |
After the switch: keeping the programme current in P6
The conversion happens once. The updates do not stop. Under NEC4 a revised programme goes in at least as often as the Contract Data states (32.2), under FIDIC the programme is revised whenever it stops reflecting actual progress or the Contractor's obligations, alongside the monthly progress reports (4.20), and under JCT the master programme is revised within 14 days of each decision fixing a later Completion Date and each agreed Pre-agreed Adjustment (2.9.2). Each P6 update is the same discipline: a data date, actual dates and remaining durations, a revision narrative, and the native file and a PDF issued together.
Keep a revision register beside it: the revision number, the data date, the date it went in, and whether and when it was accepted or drew a Notice. Under NEC4 the Accepted Programme in force at a compensation event's dividing date is the one its delay is measured against (63.5), and a time impact analysis under the Society of Construction Law's Protocol works from the most recent updated programme before the event, so knowing which revision held which status on which day is evidence in its own right.
Someone also has to run P6 for every revision the contract calls for: a licence and a planner who uses it, or an outside planner who has both. The revision cycle on an NEC job is set out in what a clause 32 programme revision needs to show, and the FIDIC programme behind a claim for time in the FIDIC extension of time guide.
The view from the desk
In my experience P6 usually gives a programme more stability than MS Project. On a large job MS Project can glitch, and the programme then moves because of the software rather than the plan. It is also less precise where progress is measured as physical percent complete and the client wants proper earned value reporting.
My position is that the switch is the cheapest moment the contractor will have to put the programme right. The tender team has moved on, the delivery team has not yet started relying on the file, and the client is about to read it with its own tools for the first time. Rebuild the logic once, properly, at that point, and every compensation event or claim for time afterwards is argued from a model of the job. Convert a drawn programme as it stands, and the first review is likely to find the typed dates, and much of the job can then go on defending a programme that was never built to carry a delay.
And I would not treat P6 as the point. The client asked for P6 because it wants to read the logic. A contractor who gives it logic worth reading has met the requirement. One who gives it MS Project's typed dates in P6's file format has met the letter of it, briefly.
Download the MS Project to Primavera P6 checklist
A one-page check for the first P6 submission: what to read in the client's documents, the five checks after the import, the content the contract asks for and the files that go in. Direct download, no sign-up.
MS Project to Primavera P6: frequently asked questions
Can MS Project be converted to Primavera P6?
Yes. P6 Professional imports a Microsoft Project file saved as XML through its import wizard, and a template maps summary tasks, task numbers, baselines and custom fields. The import carries activities, durations, links and dates, but typed dates arrive as constraints and links on summary tasks lose their home, so the result needs checking, and often rebuilding, before it is submitted.
Can P6 open an MPP file?
Oracle's documentation lists two Microsoft Project formats for P6 Professional to import, Microsoft Project XML and the older MPX, and not the .mpp file itself. Save the programme as XML in MS Project and import that. Online converters will write an XER from an MPP file, but they change the format, not the programme, so the constraints, calendars and lags need the same checks.
Can an NEC4 Project Manager refuse a programme that is not in P6?
Where the Scope states the form, yes. Clause 31.2 requires the programme to be in the form the Scope states, and one of the four reasons clause 31.3 gives for refusing a programme is that it fails to meet the Scope. Where the Scope says nothing about software, NEC4 does not require P6, and the software alone is not a reason the contract gives for refusing one.
Does FIDIC require Primavera P6?
Not by itself. Under the 2017 books the programme is prepared in the programming software the Specification names, or the Employer's Requirements in the Yellow Book, and if none is named, in software acceptable to the Engineer (8.3). Where the Specification names P6, a programme in other software invites a Notice of non-compliance from the Engineer, and the revised programme is then due within 14 days.
What is an XER file?
XER is Primavera P6's own export format, and it is often what a client means when it asks for the programme as the native P6 file. It carries the project's activities, relationships, calendars, codes and resources, so the client can import it into its own P6 database and check the logic and the float. A PDF shows the dates. The XER shows how they were calculated.
About the author
Roman Bazelchuk is the Founder of NEC Planning Solutions Ltd, a UK project planning and controls consultancy supporting contractors with NEC programme compliance, compensation event assessments and live project controls. He is an NEC Accredited Project Manager and holds the APMG Project Planning and Control qualification, with a BEng in Mechanical Engineering and postgraduate training in Planning and Control.
NEC Planning Solutions provides contract-aware planning support through a QA-governed delivery model, helping project teams keep programmes accepted, current and commercially useful from tender through to live delivery.
Contract asks for P6 and your programme is in MS Project?
NEC Planning Solutions converts and rebuilds programmes in Primavera P6 for specialist and main contractors, then keeps them current month by month in the format the client asked for, so the first submission and every revision after it read the way the contract expects.
To start, send the MS Project file, the contract's programme requirement, and the date the first programme is due.
