How do I register forthcoming amendments to contracts that are not yet signed?

How do I deal with Special contributions in PPT?
Answer:
To know everything about Special Contributions and how to change them, please consult the Special Contributions page.

Is the search form a logical AND or OR between the items workunit, contract, budget etc..?
Answer:
The search form is a logical AND. So if you search for budget code 94560 on contract F334, the result will be all workunits containing the two mentioned criteria. Keeping in mind of course that these workunits may as well have other budget codes and these would then as well appear.

In 'workunits' when searching for budget code 96203, I receive a list of workunits with not only budget code 96203 but as well 96205 etc. Why?
Answer:
A workunit can have several resource assignments each assigned to different budget codes. When you perform a search on a particular budget code, the result displayed will be all workunits containing that particular budget code and other budget codes as well if any of those workunits have resource assignments to other budget codes.

The CTC we were given is insufficient, how do I go about registering the known expenditure not covered in the CTC?
Answer:
That's what EVM is all about: Identifying such costs. Register them. If the budget code is not yet known then you can put a dummy code.
Once the extra expenditure is approved by the Project Leaders Office, the dummy code has to be changed to the approved code.

The staff levels we have are insufficient, how do I register the 'missing staff'? Particularly if these staff are not provided then this will increase the costs on the Industrial Service (IS) contracts.
Answer:
Staff can be registered without a name,as long as you include the Job Type in column E (category of personnel). If post is not granted and costs are incurred on IS contracts then the cost variance can be explained.

If I split my activities into Work Units with the granularity you suggest then my engineers/I will spend all our time filling in forms.
Answer:
The follow-up reporting is done ONLY on Work Units that are active or should be active. This will be calculated automatically from the system and you will be sent a link to update only these work units.

How do I register 'overheads'? e.g. training, travel, claims associated with the running/operating of several contracts. I do not want to split 50K over 20 deliverables of 4 contracts
Answer:
Although not an ideal solution according to the EVM principles, in practice we can register LOE (Level of Effort) workunits, say spreading the cost by year or with 4 deliverables per year. Its ok for a very small percentage of cost to be LOE. To make a LOE workunit you 'suffix' the WU type with 'L' , e.g. a work unit of type C would become a work unit of type CL. Furthermore LOE type work units don't require any deliverables to be entered as they are generated automatically by the system.

What do I do about the operations budget? For example we are installing equipment already in 2002, but will have 'maintenance expenditure' on the operations budget until it's use in LHC in 2007.
Answer:
Register these activities too. The system can differentiate if they are part of CTC or not. If they are 'recurrent' then register one per year with a deliverable such as 'maintenance achieved'.

A work unit has several deliverables, how do I weight them?
Answer:
Use the weight column to indicate the weight of the entire 'deliverable line'.. Note this is not the weight of the individual unit. The weighting is relative so any numbers can be used.
IMPORTANT: A '0' value is not accepted for the weight. The minimum value to be given is 1 or leave the cell blank.

How can we give 'ponders' to different Deliverables?
Answer:
There is a weight for each deliverable line (in the excel file it is the cell before the description) which is meant to handle the case of multiple deliverables per workunit. If deliverable1 represents 80% of the work and deliverable2 represents 20% then that weight would be 4 and 1 respectively (or 80 and 20)

The weight is for the entire deliverable line, not for each unit of the deliverable. Example: if my task is to clean 5 offices (deliverable1) and 1 conference room (deliverable2), then assuming it's twice as much work to clean a conference room, the weights would be deliverable1:5 and deliverable2:2.

How to configure Excel so that it doesn't insert hyperlinks
Answer:
You need to :

1. In the Tools menu, go to AutoCorrect options
2. In the Autocorrect options go to the AutoFormat As You Type tab
3. Deselect 'Internet and network paths with hyperlinks'

To remove hyperlinks that already exist in the spreadsheet you can use the following trick (Microsoft's recommendation - not mine) :

- Type the number 1 in a blank cell, and right-click the cell.
- Click Copy on the shortcut menu.
- While pressing CTRL, select each hyperlink you want to deactivate. (To select a cell that has a hyperlink in it without jumping to the hyperlink destination, click the cell and hold the mouse button until the cursor becomes a cross , then release the mouse button.)
- Click Paste Special on the Edit menu.
- Under Operation, click Multiply and then click OK.

What kind of resources should go under L1, L2, L4 and L8
Answer:
L1 is used for resources paid by the CERN personnel budget (e.g. staff, fellow)
L2 is used for resources paid by budget material (e.g. industrial service with label Sxxx (contract number), extensions of technical students contracts, project associates)
L3 is used for resources expressed in man/month (e.g. experts, consultants, users)
L4 is used for design office
L8 is used for not yet defined labour

What is the link between CFU and the data in EVM
Answer:
Resource assignments of type M1 in PPT (Supplies & procurement) refer to orders in accountancy of type FF.
These orders fulfill two functions:

- they represent commitments in the future and are used for preparing budgets
- they are used to pay invoices received from the firm.

Invoices are linked to the corresponding FF, to the best knowledge of the invoice office. All these FFs you find in CET with their actual payments and open commitments. This financial planning of the contract ( all FFs linked to a contract) is prepared by AC-DI BP office with a special care to reflect as much as possible the terms of payments agreed with the contractor.

FFs are then spread across Work Units in PPT, as Resource Assignment lines. You may have several FFs for the same work units or the same FF spread across several work units (with the proportionate amount on each resource assignment line).

Having the correct FFs information in PPT-EVM serves two purposes:

- it allows an automatic calculation of the actual cost for each work unit linked to a contract
- the planned end dates of the work unit may be used propagated to all FFs under this work unit to postpone or advance the planned payment date of open commitments. This allows the spending profile of the contract in accountancy to be as close to reality as possible.

Please note that this link is not operational yet since we are still in the data collection phase, but it is planned to come into production at one point. There is no automatic link yet. This means that somebody in AC-DI-BP needs to review this contract, check the financial part of the info (amounts, budget codes) while leaving the technical info entirely to your responsibility. After the review there might be a need to create new FFs, to better reflect the current state of the planning. This is usually what happens when changes in the payment conditions have taken place. At the moment there are no tools to allow a quick review + changes. All this is done manually and it generally takes quite some time. But it is planned to introduce enhancements in PPT to care for these requirements as well as some workflow procedures to ensure that both the Technical + Financial people agree on the new planning of the contract.

Is there a way to order the data by budget code, holders etc...?
Answer:

Yes. In the PPT system when you are in the workunit screen, clicking on the column headers will order your data accordingly. You can select several ordering at once. The ordered data will be kept when you export it into the excel file.

What is the WBS?
Answer:

WBS stands for Work Breakdown Structure. The EVM system uses this in order to be able to identify all of the activities necessary to complete the LHC machine and to ensure that nothing is forgotten. It is divided into two parts. The first part (nodes LHC.1 to LHC.7) are for Engineering and Supply activities and the second part (nodes LHC.8 to LHC.26) are for Installation and Commissioning activities.

Can we define some more nodes in the WBS?
Answer:

Yes. You may wish to increase the number of sub-nodes in the WBS in order to make the structure more useful for your activities. We do recommend that you keep it fairly simple in order that it remains clear for everyone. A maximum of around 4 "levels" is recommended, i.e. LHC.4.1.2.7. At the moment it is not possible for you to make changes to the WBS - you should send your requirements to Pierre Bonnal.

When I look under the WBS node and select the 'Long format' display I do not see the details?
Answer:

Most probably the problem is with the uploading of the workunits: when you upload your workunits with resource lines and deliverables, you have to put an N in front of every line, not only the workunit lines. In such a case, the easiest is to download the existing workunits, put a D in front of them and upload to delete them, and then finally upload your (corrected) file with N in front of workunits/resource lines and deliverables.

How do I register forthcoming amendments to contracts that are not yet signed?

Answer:

You should use as description of the work unit and resource assignment, for example, "Planned amendment to F400" rather than something like "F400/XX not yet signed". By using this format, the amendment is not yet formally linked to the contract in PPT but enables you still to do a search on the contract in the description field. As soon as an amendment is signed and the reference becomes official (e.g. F400/01) then it is important to make this reference appear at the beginning of the description for the corresponding resource assignment, e.g. F400/01 extra costs