Unusual calendar needed: 8 days on, 6 days off, Repeat

[Lilliabeth]

How can I make a Project plan reflect our company's schedule of 8 days on then 6 days off, 8 days on then 6 days off, etc.?
Also a "day" = 10 hours.
Thank you.

--Lilliabeth

 

[JulieInMaine]

Hi Lilliabeth,

You don't state what version of Project you are using and that does make a difference in the directions. For right now I'll assume you are using Project 2010.

Project Ribbon - Change Working Time icon to open the Change Working Time dialog.
Click the Work Weeks tab and with the only line "Default" selected, click the Details button.
Click on Sunday in the list and Shift+Click on Saturday to select all days.
Click in the option "Set days to these specific working times."
Enter the working time (10 hours) for all days.

Now everyday is a working day.
The next step is to create the 6 days off schedule.
I arbitrarily picked Nov 4 - 9 as the first 6 days off rotation.

Select Nov 4 (Sunday) and click the Exceptions tab - Create an exception called "Sundays" as a day off - click the details tab and repeat the Sunday exception every 2 weeks.
Select Nov 5 (Monday) and create the Monday exception repeating every 2 weeks on Monday.
Repeat the process above for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to create the repeating 6 days off.

You should now have a schedule with 8 days on and 6 days off. Before leaving the Change Working time dialog, click the Options button and set day = 8 and week = 80.

If you are using Project 2007, you get to the Change Working time dialog through Tool menu. If you are using Project 2003, it will be much more manual as there are not repeating exceptions. Let me know if you are using 2003 and I'll try to give you some guidance there.

Julie