Setting Up Material Resources

Material resources are consumables that you use up as the project proceeds. On a construction project, material resources might include nails, lumber, and concrete. For the toy commercial project, video tape is the consumable resource that interests you most. You work with material resources in Project mainly to track the rate of consumption and the associated cost. Although Project is not a complete system for tracking inventory, it can help you stay better informed about how quickly you are consuming your material resources.

Comparing Work and Material Resources

Following are some ways material resources are similar to and different from work resources.

For both material and work resources, you can edit and contour resource assignments, set up multiple pay rates, specify different pay rates to apply at different times, and share resources through a resource pool. (You will work with these subjects in later chapters.) In addition, cost calculations for material resources work just about the same way as they do for work resources.

Unlike work resources, however, material resources do not use overtime cost rates, resource calendars, or maximum units.

In this exercise, you enter information about a material resource.

1. In the Resource Sheet, click the next empty cell in the Resource Name column.

2. Type Video Tape and press [Tab].

3. In the Type field, click the down arrow and select Material, and press [Tab].

4. In the Material Label field, type 30-min. cassette and press [Enter]

   You will use 30-minute cassettes as the unit of measure to track video tape consumption during the project. Your screen should look similar to the following illustration: