Indirect Labor

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Alwayslearningelec

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NJ
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Estimator
Ive always had a tough time accurately figuring indirect labor which can account for 10-15% of job cost.
To me the big indirect labor costs are
non working foreman time
PM
Eng
super

the hardest being non working supervision and why I say that is.
a GC/owner gives you schedule at bid time. Let’s say it’s a renovation job. For some reason the schedule is pretty long. Let’s say I have 5000 installation labor hours but the schedule is 30 months . Let’s say I have a working Forman but he may not be working 2 hours a day. Now do I figure 2 hours a day for 30 months? guess this is we’re “building a job” experience comes into play. Maybe our time onsite may only be 12 months that would make a decent difference . Point is when given an overall schedule I have a tough time determining how long we’ll actually be there. No sure it’s always “day 1” til “day done”.
 
What is a non-working foreman?
Every Job that I supervised, had to do my work and try to keep everyone else on track.
 
Fred B said:
What is a non-working foreman?
Every Job that I supervised, had to do my work and try to keep everyone else on track.
Click to expand...

A lot of times if we have a small crew will have a working Foreman who works with his tools, but also needs an hour to a day to do paperwork deal with supply houses etc. that we call nonworking time. Obviously if you have a large enough crew, you’ll have a full-time non-working supervision who’s your supervisors


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Alwayslearningelec said:
A lot of times if we have a small crew will have a working Foreman who works with his tools, but also needs an hour to a day to do paperwork deal with supply houses etc. that we call nonworking time. Obviously if you have a large enough crew, you’ll have a full-time non-working supervision who’s your supervisors


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Click to expand...
I've had days were it seemed got nothing done for the time spent trouble shooting other guys issues, chasing materials, and trying to find "where is 'Jim' now". It seemed there was always another "Jim" getting hired when they (the company) caught onto the last one.
Some of the same issues still, but I now am "the company" and got rid of "Jim" quick. ("Jim" fictitious name.)
 
In my opinion any one who is working on the project regardless of what they are doing should have their time charged to the project. Otherwise you have no way to know what it cost you.
 
Another example . Bidding a job today were schedule for job is 710 days . My works i about 1,300 hours .


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Alwayslearningelec said:
I'm not sure that's very clear.
Click to expand...
If they can't provide a schedule for a job dragging out that long, I would qualify exactly how many non-productive hours are included, exclude any overtime, liquidated damages, price escalations.....in other words, I would not even bother bidding and tell them why
 
If a project is going to run 30 months, it surely isn't likely that every trade will be on site for the entire 30 months. There should be a schedule that indicates when your trade is expected to be on site and your duration, which doesn't necessarily mean you are there every day of the duration. You might be expected to provide temporary power, so that's going to happen right up front, long before the gear arrives on site and you start running feeders and whatnot. Obviously you can't install panels, subpanels and outlets until the walls are up. Lots of moving parts.

Get a copy of MS Project or some other GANTT based software and play around with your time. You could start by estimating based on having free and unlimited access to all the areas of your work. Get your hours and manpower loading. Now start building in the predecessor events and see how that affects things.
 
Fred B said:
What is a non-working foreman?
Every Job that I supervised, had to do my work and try to keep everyone else on track.
Click to expand...
After I ran about 7-8 guys it got unruly to try to mama GE the project as well. Tools came off at that point. Sue it can be done but it’s not very efficient and mistakes get made. Not as bad as the project I ran by myself with 30 guys and no foreman underneath me. 100 phone calls a day. 40 acre site. 4 or 5 crews all over the place.
 
gadfly56 said:
If a project is going to run 30 months, it surely isn't likely that every trade will be on site for the entire 30 months. There should be a schedule that indicates when your trade is expected to be on site and your duration, which doesn't necessarily mean you are there every day of the duration. You might be expected to provide temporary power, so that's going to happen right up front, long before the gear arrives on site and you start running feeders and whatnot. Obviously you can't install panels, subpanels and outlets until the walls are up. Lots of moving parts.

Get a copy of MS Project or some other GANTT based software and play around with your time. You could start by estimating based on having free and unlimited access to all the areas of your work. Get your hours and manpower loading. Now start building in the predecessor events and see how that affects things.
Click to expand...
Most times there's just over durations given like 380 calendar days or 12 months etc. . Rarely is there an actual schedule at bid time. Maybe milestones sometimes.
 
Alwayslearningelec said:
Most times there's just over durations given like 380 calendar days or 12 months etc. . Rarely is there an actual schedule at bid time. Maybe milestones sometimes.
Click to expand...
That's...inefficient. You'll have to make some guesstimates on how frequently you need to break work and remobilize and bid accordingly.
 
gadfly56 said:
That's...inefficient. You'll have to make some guesstimates on how frequently you need to break work and remobilize and bid accordingly.
Click to expand...
Exactly. That's where I get a bit lost. If I was an electrician I may have a better feel for job/install sequence of other trades etc.

Think it would help.
 
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