Obviously the number of hours being committed to each project is critical. Depending on the line of work you are in labor can make up upwards of 80% of the project total price.
Knowing the labor commitment is critical on any project!
The labor commitment is obviously going to be used to calculate part of the project price but the hours also need to be used to help you schedule your jobs and help you track your profit margins and employee performance.
In fact project budget times can help put together an employee bonus plan based on hours worked versus hours budgeted.
Budgeting Time in a Project
In Estimate Rocket the number of hours will participate in the total dollars calculation but also participate later when determining your profit margin. And the employee tracked hours will play a large role.
In this project 100 hour are estimated at $75 per hour for $7500 of the project total.
The time can come from calculated items (assemblies with production rates) or from time added as a direct number of hours depending on your estimating style.
Scheduling the Project
The hours will then be used for helping determine how many days to schedule the project. Obviously taking into account how many crew members are planned to be used.
In this case around 4 days for Supervisor 4 (S4) with 2 crew members working on the schedule from May 13-16.
Tracking Worked Time versus Budget Time
In this case the employees punched for 73 hours against a 100 hour project budget which has now been completed.
Your profitability section in the project detail of Estimate Rocket reflects that success!
And the employee accountability will show the individual hours for each employee by day for that project.
These employees can be singled out when setting up the bonus structure. Perhaps a slightly different structure for supervisors.
100 estimated hours of work was completed in 73 hours by these 3 employees.
Giving a bonus on the saved 27 hours is a way that you can retain top workers in a challenging work environment.
In this case the 100 hours from the original estimate carried forward to help you schedule this project and your employees to track their time against which gives you an immediate view of your profit margin on this project and a vehicle with which to base an employee incentive program.
Other Interesting Education Articles
Using Project Hours Budgeting to Reward your Employees
Tracking Profitability and Sales in Estimate Rocket
Managing Scope of Work Changes in Estimate Rocket
Sensible Changes to your Profit Margin in Estimate Rocket
Managing Project Completed Free Follow Ups and Follow Up Campaigns