Using an element structure

You can define a parent-child relationship between elements in a project. The parent element is at a higher level than the child. Parent-child relationships can be one-to-one or one-to-many. You can create a multi-level, tree-like hierarchy of elements based on the parent-child relationships. Typically, many elements in the hierarchy can be both, parents (to lower-level elements) and children (to higher-level ones). You can define budget lines only for elements that are part of the element hierarchy.

Child elements and frequency

You can define a one-to-many parent-child relationship where the a child element can be linked to a parent element multiple times.

Example

For a construction project, you create a parent element, Heating, to contain 40 occurrences of a child element, Radiator. You specify a frequency of 40 when defining the parent-child relationship for the two elements. By defining the resources required for the budget lines of the radiator (element), the resources can be determined using the formula:

frequency * resource quantity

For example, to install one radiator you require 0.5 hours of labor, resulting in 20 hours to install all the radiators (40 * 0.5)

Header elements

In the element hierarchy, you can include elements that can be used to provide a grouping structure for child elements at lower levels. This special type of element is referred to as the header element and can be created using the Layouts for Extra Elements (tpptc1101m000) session. A header element contains only a code, description and a search key. You cannot specify budget lines for a header element.

Top element

The element at the highest level in an element structure is referred to as a Top element. For a project, you can create several sets of element structures, whose elements are not related to one another. You can specify the element structure you want to use, by specifying the top element in the Budget Top Element field of the project definition in the Project (tppdm6600m400) session. You can also define multiple top elements.

Aggregating progress and cost

The multilevel hierarchy of the budget provides these benefits:

  • Progress information can be aggregated from an element at a lower level to an element at a higher level.
  • Actual cost information can be aggregated from an element at a lower level to an element at a higher level.