A Primavera P6 alternative for owners
Primavera P6 is the scheduling system most large capital and maintenance programmes run on. It is also a client-server product built for planners, licensed per seat and administered by IT. Owners who need the schedule, the estimate, earned value and risk in one place, readable by everyone who makes decisions, often look for an alternative that still exchanges XER files with the contractors who use P6.
Why owners look for an alternative
The reasons are rarely the scheduling engine. P6 calculates a critical path well. The friction is everything around it:
- Access. Seats are expensive, so planners get licences and executives get PDFs. The people who decide rarely look at the live schedule.
- Infrastructure. P6 Professional needs a database; P6 EPPM needs a database and an application server, plus patching, backups and upgrades.
- Scope. The schedule is one system; the estimate, timesheets, risk analysis, earned value reporting and the portfolio view are other products, add-on modules or spreadsheets, each exported and reconciled by hand.
What an alternative has to do
For an owner, replacing P6 outright is rarely the goal: contractors and consultants will keep sending P6 schedules. A practical alternative has to:
- open XER files with their WBS, activities, relationships and lags, calendars, constraints, resources, activity codes and progress intact;
- calculate the same critical path from the same inputs, so the dates can be trusted;
- write XER back, so a schedule can go to the contractor or into P6 again;
- add what the owner needs on top: the estimate behind the schedule, earned value by period, risk analysis, change control and a portfolio roll-up.
How DeltaSys approaches it
DeltaSys runs in the browser. An XER file, including multi-project files, opens with its calendars (resource calendars too), resources and assignments, expenses, activity codes, steps, OBS and cost accounts. On Oracle's own sample projects the forecast finish agrees with P6 to the day; projects linked by relationships to other projects need those projects in the same file. The schedule then carries the estimate it came from, earned value with CPI and SPI by week or month, Monte Carlo schedule and cost risk, change requests modelled as what-if scenarios before approval, and a portfolio view across every project, and it can be written back to XER at any time.
It is not a clone of P6 and does not try to look like one. It is a project controls platform that speaks P6's file format.
Side by side
| Need | DeltaSys | Primavera P6 / P6 EPPM |
|---|---|---|
| Installation | Browser, nothing to install | Database and, for EPPM, application servers |
| Critical path scheduling, calendars, resources, leveling, codes | Yes | Yes |
| XER | Import and export, multi-project | Native |
| Estimate in the same model | Yes, classed Class 5 to 1 | Separate product or spreadsheet |
| Earned value by period with thresholds | Yes | Values in P6; reporting usually elsewhere |
| Monte Carlo schedule and cost risk | Built in | Separate product |
| Portfolio roll-up for executives | Built in | EPPM dashboards, more licences |
Comparison as we understand the products from their published documentation; editions and licensing vary.
Questions
Can DeltaSys replace P6 Professional?
For an owner or a small planning team, often yes: it schedules, levels, baselines, progresses and reports. Where contracts require P6, DeltaSys works alongside it, reading and writing XER.
Will the dates match P6?
On the same inputs the critical path engine gives the same forecast finish on Oracle's sample projects. Differences come from things outside the file, such as relationships to projects that were not exported with it.
Do we have to move everything at once?
No. Owners usually start with one project or with read-only access to schedules they receive, and keep P6 as the record until they decide otherwise.
Next: open an XER file online, or read about earned value management.
Primavera and P6 are trademarks of Oracle Corporation; Microsoft Project is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation; PMBOK is a trademark of the Project Management Institute; AACE is a trademark of AACE International; Last Planner is a registered trademark of the Lean Construction Institute. DeltaSys is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Standards are described in our own words; see the publications themselves for their text.