Assigning standard work to permanent resources

Standard work is time during which a permanent resource is not available to work on project activities. Standard work might be activities such as administration or training of other staff. When you assign a permanent resource to a task, the task's elapsed duration is adjusted to take the resource's standard work into account. For example, if you specify that a Manager spends 20% of their time doing administration work, whenever you assign the Manager to a task, 20% of their time is automatically marked as administration time when they are not available to work on project activities.

You can also use standard work as an alternative to calendars for defining a resource's non-working time. For example, if all your employees work to the same project calendar, when one employee wants to take a holiday you could assign 100% standard work to that resource for the vacation period. In this way, you only have one calendar to update whenever there are any changes to the working week.

You may find it easier to assign standard work if you are using the 24 hour clock.

To assign standard work to a permanent resource:

Display the Permanent Resource Properties dialog and click the Standard Work tab.

The Standard Work tab may not currently be displayed on the Permanent Resource Properties dialog. If it is not currently visible, click More >> to display it. If you do not want this tab to appear, you can hide it from view by clicking Less <<.
Click Add. A new row appears in the dialog, representing an item of standard work.
With the standard work item selected, click Details. The Standard Work Details dialog appears.
Select the type of standard work you want to assign to the resource in the Standard Work field. Only those types of standard work that are currently marked as being 'active' appear in the hierarchical list.
Enter the date and time on which the standard work begins in the Given Start field.
Enter the date and time on which the standard work finishes in the Given Finish field; alternatively, enter the duration of the standard work in the Duration field.
In the Type field, specify whether you want the standard work to be calculated as:

Work Percent - the resource spends a percentage of the specified time on the standard work. For example, a resource may spend 20% of the time on Administration standard work, or 100% of the time on a hospital appointment.
Effort per Resource - if the amount of time spent on standard work depends on the number of resources assigned to a task. For example, if each resource spends 1 hour inputting data, if you assign 1 resource to a task, only 1 hour is occupied by data entry; if you assign 50 resources to a task, 50 hours are occupied by data entry.
Fixed Effort - if a fixed amount of time is spent on standard work regardless of the number of resources assigned to a task. For example, half a day could be spent on stock control whether you assign 5 or 25 resources to the task.

Enter an amount in the Percentage or Effort field (depending on the way in which the standard work is calculated).
Enter any explanatory notes relating to the standard work in the Notes field.
Click OK.

The Actual column shows the amount of standard work that has been completed; the Remain column shows the amount of standard work still to be completed; the Progress Period column shows the progress period that has been used most recently in the project.

When you assign standard work to a resource, any existing allocations of that resource are adjusted to take account of the standard work. This might cause the elapsed duration of some tasks to change if the resource has been assigned as a resource-driven allocation. For example, if you have a Bricklayer allocated to a task for 10 hours of effort, then you set 10% standard work on this resource, the allocation of 10 hours of effort will then finish 1 hour later because the Bricklayer has to spend 1 hour doing standard work.

If you have chosen to display standard work of the selected type on the bar chart, new standard work assignments appear on the resource's allocation bars.