This article explains about Future Period Bucket Planning in primavera p6

Let discuss a case

Imagine there is an activity called Slab Reinforcement which requires 10 days to complete,
Now for this activity you have assigned 10 labours to work/day.

And this is how this assignment normally looks in primavera

This means in Oracle Primavera P6, the budgeted or planned units for an assignment to that
activity are spread evenly across the duration of the activity or call it as linear distribution

But in site we may not allocate resources evenly to all kind of activity, let me explain brief you

Types of
Method of resource distribution
activities
Curing concrete Evenly distributed over time
Security checks Evenly distributed over time
Uneven distributed, during initial stages of activity, less resources are deployed, as it keep progressing density of
Excavation
allocation will increase and later at the end resources allocation will decrease
Uneven distributed, during initial stages of activity, less resources are deployed, as it keep progressing density of
Footing work
allocation will increase and later at the end resources allocation will decrease

Above table explains well that not all activities are same, and linearly distribution of resources
are not possible for all activities

Now, how to tackle this issue????

Here come the savior, FUTURE PERIOD BUCKET PLANNING AND RESOURCES
CURVES (I will explain resource curves this in another article)
 What is future period bucket planning?
Using future period bucket planning we can manually enter the budgeted or planned resource
allocation per assignment in the timescale unit you choose (days, weeks, months, quarters, years,
or financial periods)

Here is an example

You can see above, that on initial days i will be using only 5 labours/day and then increased to
15 and at the end I reduced to 5.

So if you are an experienced planner and you have good idea on how resources will be spread
practically, I recommend you to use future period bucket planning over linear distribution

This is the most precise way of resource or role distribution

How to perform Future period bucket

planning in oracle primavera p6?
After resource is assigned, go to Project option in the menu bar and select resource assignment,
this will take you to the window where you can perform future period bucket planning. You can
manually edit over periods.

Notes

• You can compare the planned future period resource distribution to actual units and costs
in the Resource Usage Profile, Resource Usage Spreadsheet, Activity Usage Profile,
Activity Usage Spreadsheet, time-distributed reports, and the Tracking window. If you
plan your project work in defined financial periods, after you store period performance,
you can compare the resource distribution you planned to the project’s past period
actuals.
• Activity costs, including earned value and planned value, are calculated using the planned
future period resource distribution you define for activity assignments.