A weekly labour plan that matches crews to the look-ahead
On a Thursday call, the operations manager says two of your carpenters go to another job's footings in two weeks. Your look-ahead shows the framing peak that same week, but nobody has added up how many carpenters the peak needs. Left alone, the answer arrives on the Monday the crew is short.
Add up the look-ahead by trade and by week: each task's crew size times its days gives worker-days, and a week's worker-days divided by its working days is the headcount that trade needs. Set that against the people you have, and the gaps show two weeks ahead, while you can still move work, borrow people or hire. Look-aheads list activities, not people, so shortages stay hidden until they are expensive. The Lean Construction Institute's standard work for pull planning already asks each task note for the crew size that goes with its duration; the labour plan adds those numbers up.
Building the plan
- List the tasks in the next three weeks of the look-ahead, each with its trade, crew size and days, taken from the foreman rather than the schedule bar.
- Turn each task into worker-days and add them up by trade for each week.
- Divide by each week's working days for the headcount; a statutory holiday makes a four-day week.
- Set your people against it: the roster by trade, minus vacations, courses and people promised elsewhere. For a subcontracted trade, the number is the crew you ask it to commit to.
- Mark every gap: short weeks, and long weeks where people will have no planned work.
- Close short weeks, cheapest fix first: move work with float, borrow from another job, then hire or subcontract; keep overtime for what is left, with an end date. Offer spare people to other jobs early.
- Decide two weeks out and roll the plan weekly, comparing the planned headcount with who came.
Common mistakes
- Adding all trades into one headcount, so a carpenter shortage hides behind spare labourers.
- Taking durations from the schedule bar instead of the foreman.
- Forgetting vacations, courses and people promised to another job.
- Finding the gap on the Monday it arrives, when overtime is the only choice left.
Action list
Every week, with the look-ahead
- Give every task a crew size and days
- Add worker-days by trade and week
- Divide by each week's working days
- Take known absences off the roster
- Mark short and long weeks
- Close each gap two weeks ahead
- Compare the plan with who came
Check your understanding
Week 3 needs 12 carpenters and you have 9. Why look for work to move before asking for overtime?
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