Crew Size & Job Tracking

“You must have this free tool”

When you are new to Electrical Contracting and you first start thinking of crew sizes and how to keep track of your electrical projects, it may seem easy.

You may say we will work 8 hours a day 5 days a week. This gives you 40 hours per week allocated per worker. You may think of this as spending 40 Man-Hours per week for each employee that will be working on the project.

Another way to view this is to divide the total number of Man-Hours from your electrical estimate by 40 to see how many weeks it would take 1 man to complete the project…

For example: If your electrical estimate says it will take 400 Man-Hours to complete the project you would divide 400/40=10. This tells you that it would take 1 man 10 weeks or 50 days to complete the work.

This gives you an idea of what size project you are looking at.

Using this method of thinking, if you used 2 workers the math would be 400/80 so it would take 2 workers 5 weeks or 25 days.

Breaking this down, you could say if 4 workers are working, the math would be 4 workers x 8 hr. a day or 32 total hr. per day  400/32=12.5 days then 12.5/5=2.5 weeks.

You may also look at it like this: Let’s say that you have 400 Man Hours estimated from your electrical estimating software to do the project and the project duration is 25 days. You need to know how many hours per day that you will need to work to complete the project on time.

You would start by saying 400 total Man-Hours /25 days in the project. This would be 16 Man Hours that must be worked per day to complete the project in 25 days.  To check this you would say 16 x 25 = 400.

This information is great to check your Man-Hours against a project. For example: If you are bidding a project similar to another project that you have completed, it is wise to see how many Man-Hours were in the original project and how well it turned out.

 For example: If the original project took 30 days for 2 workers to complete, then you know it took 480 Man-Hours.   (16 x 30) = 480 MH

You can use 480 Man-Hours as a guide for the new project. If the new project estimate comes out to be 680 or 280 Man-Hours, then you may need to check the estimate.

This is a very simple way to check your electrical estimate. It is also only a partial view of the project.

Producing Crew Sizes for Larger Electrical Projects.

When you start estimating larger electrical projects you will find that there is more to consider.

There will be important factors to consider such as the following:

1. How long is the project duration?
2. How soon can you start to work on the project?
3. If there is site work, can you start early or will you need to wait?
4. What season will the project start? Weather is out of your control but if you are working in mud your production will be slower, so you will need to make that time up elsewhere.
5. When will the building be in the dry so you can start working?
6. How many days will be left to finish the project?

Additional things to consider:

1. When are the walls going up?
2. When does the drywall go up?
3. When does the painting start?
4. When will the ceiling being installed?

There is much to think about to get the best production.

1. Will you need a lift?
2. Can you do your ceiling work before the walls go up to utilize a lift?
3. Will the slab be poured or will you need an all-terrain lift to move around?

Producing schedules to allocate your Man-Hours.

On larger Electrical Projects you will be producing a schedule to work by. Your schedule will change as you perform task faster or slower than predicted. Some projects you will be in control of your schedule but in most cases the General Contractor will create a schedule for the project and you will need to perform your task to meet pre-selected dates.

If you are lucky the General Contractor will either let you review the schedule to make changes or ask you to provide information pertaining to the time allowed for each phase of your work. You must review the electrical schedule closely and provide input or agree to the timeframes allocated for each phases of the project.

If you have the proper electrical estimate this task is easy and will pay dividends because you will know the Man-Hours you have allowed for each phase. The Best Bid Hybrid Pro performs this task perfectly.

Setting up your schedule

We will show you how to easily set up your electrical schedule.

You should look at the entire project and break it down so you can get the feel of the difficulty of completion. In time you will have a feel for the numbers but let’s create a mock project to show you the steps…

This project will be called Gadston Project Center. We know that the project duration will be 365 days.

To start with the project duration is given in total number of calendar days to complete the project.

A 365 day project will have several days that you will not work.

For example:
01. Holidays.
02. Weekends.
03. Weather delays.

You see that the project duration is 365 days but you will not have 365 days to complete your work.

To start with you must do your best to determine how many days you will actually have to work.

Things to consider will be when will you be able to actually start installing electrical work. There usually will be site prep, slab, steel erection, and other things going on that you may not be able to be on site.

We can start building the schedule once we determine how many days we will have actually have to work.

In this project here are the key points of information:

1. The project has 365 total days to complete.
2. You know you will not be on site the entire 365 days.
3. Your electrical estimate shows 6000 Man-Hours to complete.
4. You only have 6 employees that you can allocate to this project.

Creating a Mock Schedule

Let’s start by doing a mock schedule to see where we are.

From talking to the General Contractor this is the information we have received.