Primavera P6 & Project Controls training.

What project controls actually is

On a capital project, the Project Manager cannot personally track every activity, every cost line and every emerging risk. That is what project controls exists for: the integrated management of scope, schedule, cost and risk that gives the PM the numbers, forecasts and evidence needed to make weekly delivery decisions and defend those decisions with the Employer.

On EPC, oil & gas, infrastructure, power and mining projects, project controls is a formally staffed discipline. Planners own the schedule. Cost engineers own the budget. Risk analysts own the register. And Primavera P6 is the tool that ties the schedule side of that machinery together.

The seven functions that define project controls

1. Planning & scheduling — WBS, activities, logic, calendars, resources; producing the baseline programme
2. Progress measurement — earned value, physical percent complete, actualised durations
3. Cost management — budget establishment, forecasting, variance analysis
4. Risk management — qualitative registers, quantitative simulation, contingency drawdown tracking
5. Change control — variation orders, scope changes, trend logs
6. Reporting — internal weekly dashboards, monthly Employer submissions, board-level rollups
7. Claims support — schedule evidence packs for EOT, disruption and quantum submissions

Where Primavera P6 fits

P6 sits at the centre of functions 1, 2, 6 and 7 — and touches every other function through the data it holds. The tool's three architectural strengths are what make it the industry standard on capital delivery:

• Multi-project resource pool — a single pool of resources feeding many projects, essential on any real EPC portfolio
• Baseline management — up to 50 baselines per project with per-activity comparison, which is what makes forensic delay work possible years after the fact
• Audit defensibility — a data model that survives scrutiny in Engineer determinations, Dispute Adjudication Boards and arbitration

How the disciplines connect

Each of the seven functions above has a Primavera P6 workflow at its heart. This is the integrated picture:

The four skill deep-dives

Every project controls professional needs disciplined command of four specific P6 skills. Each has its own page in this cluster:

• Primavera P6 WBS — the Work Breakdown Structure that everything else hangs off
• Primavera P6 Critical Path — forward/backward pass, float, near-critical activities
• Primavera P6 Baseline — capture, compare, control
• Primavera P6 S-Curve — cost and physical-progress cumulative curves

Advanced project controls with P6

Once the four foundational skills are second nature, the advanced project-controls competencies are what genuinely differentiate senior planners and controls leads. The two most valuable are:

• Primavera P6 Delay Analysis — TIA, Windows Analysis, As-Planned vs As-Built and Collapsed As-Built inside P6
• Primavera P6 for EOT Claims — the full evidence-pack workflow for Extension of Time submissions under FIDIC and similar contracts

EVM in Primavera P6

Earned Value Management is the discipline of comparing what you planned to spend and complete against what you actually spent and completed, in a way that lets you forecast where you'll end up. In P6, EVM is powered by:

• Budgeted units and costs loaded at the activity level, rolled up through the WBS
• Baseline capture before work starts — the baseline is the source of truth for planned values (PV, BCWS)
• Progress updates that generate earned values (EV, BCWP)
• Actual cost recording either inside P6 or imported from the cost system (AC, ACWP)
• Derived metrics: CPI (cost performance index), SPI (schedule performance index), EAC (estimate at completion), TCPI (to-complete performance index)

Our EVM calculator is a good place to sanity-check formulas before you build the P6 layout.

Reporting that the PM will actually read

Weekly and monthly reporting is where project controls delivers its most visible value. A good reporting cadence in P6 has three layers:

1. Weekly planner report — two-week look-ahead, activities completed / started / slipped, top risks. Under 2 pages.
2. Monthly PM report — progress S-curves (cost + physical), CPI/SPI, milestone tracker, variance narrative, forecast completion. Under 6 pages.
3. Employer submission — formal contractual document; typically includes baseline vs current comparison, EVM, delay register, change log, upcoming decisions requested. Follows the format defined in the contract.

The FIDIC connection

On any project running under FIDIC contracts (Red, Yellow or Silver Book), project controls work is contractual evidence in waiting. Every baseline you capture, every update you post, and every fragnet you insert could end up in a claim submission months later. Two GSTPM courses formalise this integration:

• Our 24-hour Primavera P6 course covers scheduling, baselines, EVM, delay analysis and S-curves
• Our FIDIC Contract Management course takes the same P6 workflows and maps them to FIDIC clauses, notices and claim procedures

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