Course Introduction
Project calendar and working-time configuration is a fundamental aspect of effective project planning, scheduling, and control. Every project schedule depends on clearly defined working days, daily working hours, holidays, shift patterns, and non-working periods to calculate activity durations and forecast completion dates accurately. The Project Calendar and Working-Time Configuration Course equips participants with the knowledge and practical skills required to establish, configure, validate, and maintain project calendars that reflect actual operating conditions. It emphasizes the importance of aligning scheduling assumptions with contractual requirements, resource availability, organizational policies, and project delivery objectives.
Inaccurate calendar configuration can create significant problems throughout the project lifecycle. Incorrect working hours, unrecorded public holidays, inconsistent shift arrangements, and poorly managed exceptions can distort activity dates, float calculations, critical paths, and overall completion forecasts. These errors may remain unnoticed until project teams begin comparing planned progress with actual performance or encounter unexpected date changes after schedule updates. This course examines how calendar settings influence schedule calculations and helps participants understand why reliable working-time definitions are essential for producing credible project programmes, realistic deadlines, and consistent project reporting.
Participants will explore the main types of project calendars, including global calendars, project-specific calendars, resource calendars, and activity calendars, depending on the scheduling system being used. The programme explains how calendar assignments affect individual activities, available resources, and the overall project schedule. Participants will learn how to establish standard working weeks, configure daily working periods, define recurring non-working days, and accommodate variations between departments, contractors, locations, and specialist teams. Particular attention is given to understanding calendar inheritance, assignment priorities, and the consequences of applying different working-time rules across interconnected project activities.
The course also examines advanced working-time configuration requirements, including multiple shifts, night work, weekend operations, seasonal working patterns, shutdown periods, public holidays, and exceptional working days. Participants will learn how to represent these arrangements in a structured and consistent manner while accounting for operational limitations, labour agreements, site access restrictions, and contractual working-time provisions. The programme considers how different calendars can affect activity durations, resource availability, project milestones, and dependencies, enabling participants to identify situations where calendar differences may produce unexpected schedule outcomes or create unrealistic expectations about project progress.
Effective calendar management requires more than initial configuration. Project conditions change, new work packages are introduced, holidays are revised, and construction or operational activities may require temporary adjustments to working hours. Participants will learn how to review calendar assignments, manage exceptions, control revisions, and assess the implications of proposed changes before incorporating them into approved schedules. The course also addresses calendar-related schedule troubleshooting, including unexpected date shifts, inconsistent duration calculations, resource availability conflicts, and differences between planned and actual working time. Practical examples demonstrate how disciplined configuration and validation procedures can reduce scheduling errors and improve the reliability of project controls.
By completing this course, participants will be better prepared to configure and manage project calendars that accurately reflect the working conditions under which activities will be performed. They will understand how to select appropriate calendar structures, establish working-time rules, assign calendars consistently, investigate scheduling discrepancies, and maintain reliable calendar data throughout the project lifecycle. The programme emphasizes practical application, schedule integrity, and continuous improvement, enabling project teams to strengthen planning accuracy, improve coordination between resources and activities, reduce avoidable scheduling errors, and support more dependable project completion forecasts.
Duration
5 days
Who Should Attend
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Project managers responsible for ensuring that project schedules reflect realistic working patterns, contractual commitments, and delivery requirements.
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Planning and scheduling engineers who configure calendars and maintain project programmes.
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Project controls professionals responsible for schedule integrity, activity date calculations, progress monitoring, and completion forecasting.
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Primavera P6 users seeking to improve their understanding of calendar creation, assignment, and working-time configuration.
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Project schedulers using Microsoft Project or other scheduling applications that support project, activity, and resource calendars.
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Construction managers coordinating working hours, site access, shift arrangements, and contractor activities.
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Resource planners responsible for aligning labour availability, equipment operating hours, and activity schedules.
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Engineering managers coordinating work across offices, design teams, technical disciplines, and geographically distributed project locations.
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Contract administrators and project commercial professionals who need to understand calendar assumptions affecting contractual milestones and programme submissions.
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PMO personnel responsible for developing scheduling standards, calendar templates, and project controls procedures.
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Human resources and workforce planning professionals supporting shift planning and labour availability on major projects.
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Procurement and logistics professionals coordinating supplier working days, delivery windows, and operational shutdown periods.
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Project management consultants conducting schedule reviews, programme audits, and calendar-related troubleshooting.
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Infrastructure and industrial project professionals working with extended shifts, weekend operations, or continuous production environments.
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Project team members seeking practical skills in calendar validation, schedule troubleshooting, and working-time management.
Course Objectives
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Explain the principles of project calendar management and describe how working days, daily hours, holidays, and non-working periods influence schedule calculations.
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Differentiate between global, project-specific, activity, and resource calendars and determine appropriate applications based on project requirements and software capabilities.
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Create and configure project calendars by defining standard working weeks, daily working periods, recurring exceptions, and applicable non-working days.
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Establish realistic working-time arrangements for multiple shifts, night operations, weekend work, seasonal schedules, shutdown periods, and exceptional working days.
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Assign appropriate calendars to project activities and resources while maintaining consistency between planned work, available labour, equipment, and operational requirements.
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Analyse how calendar settings influence activity start and finish dates, calculated durations, float, critical paths, milestone forecasts, and overall schedule completion.
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Identify and resolve calendar-related scheduling problems, including unexpected date changes, incorrect duration calculations, inconsistent working-time assumptions, and resource conflicts.
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Incorporate contractual calendars, public holidays, location-specific working conditions, and organizational policies into schedule configuration and governance procedures.
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Implement calendar validation, revision control, documentation, and quality assurance procedures to maintain schedule integrity during project updates and changes.
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Develop a practical calendar management framework that improves scheduling accuracy, resource coordination, reporting consistency, and the reliability of project delivery forecasts.
Comprehensive Course Outline
Module 1: Fundamentals of Project Calendars and Working Time
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Understand the purpose of project calendars and examine how working-time definitions influence activity scheduling, project duration calculations, and completion forecasts.
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Differentiate between calendar days, working days, working hours, elapsed time, and non-working periods in project planning and schedule interpretation.
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Examine the relationship between project calendars, activity durations, resource availability, contractual deadlines, and milestone commitments.
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Identify common calendar configuration errors and evaluate their potential consequences for schedule reliability, resource coordination, and project reporting.
Module 2: Calendar Types, Structures, and Inheritance
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Explore global, project-specific, activity, and resource calendar concepts and understand how different scheduling applications implement and prioritize calendar assignments.
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Determine when to use shared calendar templates and when separate calendars are needed for contractors, locations, specialist teams, or operating conditions.
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Examine calendar inheritance, assignment changes, and the implications of modifying a shared calendar that is used by multiple activities or resources.
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Establish a structured calendar hierarchy that supports consistent scheduling practices, clear ownership, manageable revisions, and reliable project-wide reporting.
Module 3: Standard Working Weeks and Daily Working Hours
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Configure standard working weeks by defining working days, daily start and finish times, lunch breaks, and multiple working periods within a single day.
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Calculate available working hours and evaluate how daily schedules affect activity durations, date calculations, and the interpretation of planned effort.
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Establish different working-time patterns for office-based teams, site personnel, engineering disciplines, and operational departments where required.
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Validate configured working hours against organizational policies, contractor arrangements, site conditions, and approved project planning assumptions.
Module 4: Holidays, Exceptions, and Non-Working Periods
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Define recurring non-working days, public holidays, organizational closures, planned shutdowns, and other calendar exceptions that affect project execution.
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Configure one-off working days and exceptional closures to reflect approved changes in operational arrangements or project delivery requirements.
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Assess the impact of holiday calendars and non-working periods on activities with tight deadlines, constrained float, and critical milestone dependencies.
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Establish procedures for reviewing annual holiday changes, documenting exceptions, and maintaining consistent working-time assumptions across the project schedule.
Module 5: Shift Patterns, Weekend Work, and Extended Operations
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Configure suitable working-time patterns for day shifts, night shifts, rotating crews, weekend operations, and extended working hours.
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Evaluate the scheduling implications of multiple shifts and determine whether calendar definitions accurately reflect the time available for productive work.
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Coordinate working-time arrangements across contractors and specialist teams to reduce gaps, overlapping assumptions, and conflicts between successive activities.
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Assess the implications of overtime, continuous operations, planned shutdowns, and restricted working windows for schedule feasibility and resource planning.
Module 6: Calendar Assignment to Activities and Resources
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Assign appropriate calendars to project activities and resources while considering activity requirements, workforce availability, equipment operating schedules, and site restrictions.
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Examine how activity calendar assignments and resource availability settings interact and influence calculated dates, planned effort, and schedule outcomes.
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Resolve inconsistencies between contractor calendars, project calendars, specialist resource schedules, and activities that depend on several work teams.
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Establish assignment standards and verification procedures to ensure that calendar selections are appropriate, traceable, and aligned with project execution plans.
Module 7: Calendar Effects on Schedule Calculations and Critical Paths
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Analyse how differences in working-time calendars influence activity start dates, finish dates, calculated durations, total float, and critical path identification.
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Examine date shifts caused by non-working periods, calendar mismatches, restricted working windows, and changes to activity or resource calendar assignments.
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Evaluate the impact of calendar settings on contractual milestones, project completion forecasts, schedule logic, and planned handovers between work packages.
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Conduct schedule checks to identify calendar-driven discrepancies and distinguish them from changes caused by activity logic, progress updates, or revised durations.
Module 8: Calendar Configuration in Scheduling Software
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Explore calendar creation, modification, assignment, and validation workflows in Primavera P6, including relevant project, resource, and activity calendar settings.
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Examine working-time configuration and calendar assignment practices in Microsoft Project, recognizing that specific features and calculation behaviour vary by application and version.
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Develop consistent calendar templates and naming conventions that make schedules easier to maintain, review, transfer, and audit across project teams.
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Apply practical troubleshooting techniques to investigate incorrect working-time calculations, unexpected date movements, and inconsistent results following calendar changes.
Module 9: Calendar Governance, Quality Assurance, and Change Control
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Develop calendar governance standards covering ownership, creation approvals, assignment rules, naming conventions, documentation, and revision responsibilities.
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Establish quality assurance checks to verify working hours, holidays, exceptions, resource availability, and consistency with approved project assumptions.
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Evaluate proposed calendar changes before implementation and document their potential effects on critical activities, milestone dates, and contractual commitments.
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Maintain calendar registers, change histories, and review procedures that support schedule audits, reliable reporting, and consistent project controls practices.
Module 10: Practical Project Calendar Configuration Workshop
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Develop a calendar structure for a representative project by defining standard working weeks, daily working hours, holidays, exceptions, and specialist work patterns.
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Configure and assign calendars to selected activities and resources in a supported scheduling application, then verify that settings reflect the intended work arrangements.
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Test the effects of calendar changes on activity dates, durations, resource availability, and critical milestones to identify and correct configuration errors.
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Prepare a practical calendar management checklist covering setup, validation, assignment, revision control, troubleshooting, and ongoing schedule maintenance.
Training Approach
This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.
Tailor-Made Course
This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com Tel: +254 721 331 808
Training Venue
The training will be held at our Upskill Training Centre. We also offer training for a group (at a discount of 10% to 50%) at requested location all over the world. The Onsite course fee covers the course tuition, training materials, two break refreshments, buffet lunch, airport transfers, Upskill gift package, and guided tour.
Visa application, travel expenses, dinners, accommodation, insurance, and other personal expenses are catered by the participant
Certification
Participants will be issued with Upskill certificate upon completion of this course.
Airport Pickup and Accommodation
Airport pickup and accommodation is arranged upon request. For booking contact our Training Coordinator through Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com, +254 721 331 808
Terms of Payment:
Unless otherwise agreed between the two parties’ payment of the course fee should be done 3 working days before commencement of the training so as to enable us to prepare better.
