Update 29-Jan-2019: If you are using oracle primavera 8.4 and later, Claim Digger see bottom of this article Schedule Comparison.

Claim Digger is one of primavera software built in tools:

P6 Claim Digger is very useful tool to find difference between two versions of schedule or Baseline Schedules V.S Revised Schedules using primavera P6 without any additional software required.

First let me explain what is the benefit of using Primavera P6 Built in tool Claim Digger (now known as Schedule Comparison in the new primavera p6 versions). Mainly the The Clam Digger is comparing two schedules and find out what is the difference between two of them, Differences are identified as per the following terms:

1- Total Float

2- Calendar Name

3- Free Float

4- Critical Activities

5- Activity Name

6- WBS Name

7- WBS Code

8- Primary Constraint Type

9- Primary Constraint Date

10- Actual Expense Cost

11- Remaining Expense Cost

12- At Completion Expense Cost

13- Budgeted Expense Cost

14- Planned Finish Date

15- Early Finish Date

16- Early Start Date

17- Actual Start Date

18- Late Finish Date

19- Late Start Date

20- Planned Start Date

21- Actual Finish Date

22- Original Duration

23- Actual Duration

24- Remaining Duration

25- At Completion Duration

26- Actual Cost

27- At Completion Cost

28- Expense Percent Complete

29- Price Per Unit

30- Budgeted Cost

31- Remaining Cost

32- Activity Percent Complete

33- Duration Percent Complete

34- Physical Percent Complete

35- Units Percent Complete

36- Actual Labor Units

37- Budgeted Labor Units

38- At Completion Labor Units

39- Remaining Labor Units

40- Activities Added/Deleted

40.1- The following Activities have been added to the project

40.2- The following Activities have been deleted from the project

41- Activity Code Assignments Added/Deleted

42- Relationship Differences (Predecessor / Successor Relationships added or Deleted)

43- At Completion Units

44- Budgeted Units

45- Remaining Units

46- Remaining Units Per Time

47- Actual Units

48- Budgeted Duration

49- Remaining Duration

50- Resource Assignments Added/Deleted

51- Activity Steps

WoW… Do not you think it is an amazing tool ??!! , It will spot any variance between two versions in the schedule.

When you should use Claim Digger, Applications of using This tool :

1- When you receive a new version of the time schedule from the contractor, Then you should use Claim Digger to check what has been changed on the schedule.

2- When you Receive an update of the time schedule, you should check that nothing changed from the baseline original duration, relationships and constrains.

3- Before submitting your schedule to the client after new revision or update, just run fast check to ensure that noting went wrong.

How to work with Claim Digger Step by Step :

1- open claim digger from primavera p6 tools menu as per the following photo:

2- Select the Revised schedule and the Project Schedule Baseline (The two versions of the schedules you want to compare) as per the following photo :

3- Click on Advanced Options to choose what is the output values you want to see in the report.

Note: you can choose Group Report by Activity in the advanced setting if you want primavera to group all the terms i mentioned above (what ever you choose from the 51 term mentioned above) by activity.

4- Choose the report format (HTML or CSV)

The HTML format will be opened by any explorer such as Firefox, chrome or Microsoft Internet explorer

5- Click compare to run the Software

6- Sample of Claim Digger Reports:

A- HTML Report

B: CVS Report

Claim Digger Not Available Under Tools Menu in P6 Professional 8.4 and Later (Standalone):

Oracle Primavera announced that starting from version 8.4 claim digger is not available under tools menu and it has moved to Visualizer application under Schedule Comparison.

You can find the Visualizer from the tools menu as per the following photo:

Then you can find the Schedule Comparison from the menu in the following photo:

Oracle mentioned the following cause of this action:

P6 was installed with the packaged SQLite database. In this Standalone configuration (P6 versions 8.4 to 15.2) using SQLite as the database, this the expected behavior with respect to Claim Digger. Claim Digger is not available in this database option.

P6 Professional Standalone (r8.4-15.2) using a SQLite database supports all of the Project Management Functionality of P6 Professional except for the following:
– Update Baseline
– Claim Digger (Schedule compare)
– Job Services – Jobs cannot be scheduled. However, the user can use the Windows scheduler to invoke the command line interface to import, export, and run batch reports.
– Risk Analysis
– Any existing Java-based integration components developed by the customer using the P6 Remote Integration API (RMI) is not supported with an SQLite database