Deliveries

[Alwayslearningelec]

Do any of you add in separate time for bring in day/day materials from truck onto the site/container? If so how do you go about calculating that?

 

[Alwayslearningelec]

Anyone?

 

[HarrySlother]

If the job is big enough you may have an up-man - dedicated guy to move material around, unload trucks, etc.. Or if it's a small job, maybe throw in a few hours a week?

 

[Omid]

I use a mobilization rate factor that changes exponentially. When the material cost is low the rate is higher and it decreases to a fix rate as the material cost increases.

 

[Alwayslearningelec]

I use a mobilization rate factor that changes exponentially. When the material cost is low the rate is higher and it decreases to a fix rate as the material cost increases.

Thanks. Can you explain in a little more detail.

 

[Omid]

Thanks. Can you explain in a little more detail.

First I need to correct something from my previous post. My mobilization factor is based on labor, not material costs.
My mobilization is the labor technicians spend on tasks related to the project that are not part of the actual installation. This includes all the work before installation begins and wrap-up work after installation is complete but before the techs leave the site (clean-up, loading tools back into the truck, paperwork ). For larger projects a fixed mobilization rate often works well. However, as project size decreases especially approaching service jobs a fixed rate seems inaccurate. Smaller projects have disproportionately higher mobilization time as a percentage of total labor.
For example:

A small job with 5 hours of installation labor (replacing a meter can) might require 1.5 hours of mobilization or 30%.​

If the job increases to 10 hours (replacing a meter and a disconnect), mobilization may become 2 hours or 20%.​

For a 15 hour project(replacing a meter and a disconnect and running a service cable), it might take around 2.4 hours of mobilization or 16%.​

A medium job with 200 labor hours (a full wiring project) may only need about 10 hours for mobilization 5%.​

A larger project with 400 labor hours could have 18 hours of mobilization 4.5%.​

If you plot these points the mobilization percentage follows an exponential curve that start from a higher amount for smaller project and decline rapidly at the beginning and flattens toward a minimum (in my case around 4%) as labor increase. Of course the numbers will vary by company or type of work but the general behavior remains the same.