# Of Men

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Alwayslearningelec

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NJ
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Estimator
If your doing a typical 1 floor( 20k sq ft) office renovation with demo, conv receptacles/power(no feeders..just homeruns from panels), lighting, controls, security, IT and fire alarm I'd imagine there's a practical limit to the # of men you could put on the job in which they would be productive doing work. I'm having a hard time figurng that out in this situation.

With the hours I have and the timeframe they are giving( THEY DON'T WANT ANY OVERTIME) I have an average of 9 men. Would there be work available for an average of 9 men? This is where knowing how a job will be build and actually having done the installation helps a lot. Hope I'm making sense. I understand I could suggest more time but I wan't to make sure this work can't be done with 9 men. Thanks.
 
You will need to take the hours allotted from bid and time allotted for job per GC scheldule. This has to align. If not speak up or you could have a problem no matter how many men you have on site. Watch for push in scheldule. This will cost you in labor on a fast track job.
 
Well that's my question. I did that and come up with needing a average of ~9 men to complete. How would one determine if the job could take 9 men...would work be available?

What do you exactly mean push in schedule?
 
I don't know much about scheduling electrical work but I do know that pretty much on average putting two engineers on a job makes the job take about 50% longer in total man hours and three engineers just about doubles it.

Probably not as bad with skilled labor because they don't have to go to as many meetings and phone calls and such.

With that many guys working at one time in one area you're going to need a really good foreman. Otherwise you will have chaos.
 
petersonra said:
I don't know much about scheduling electrical work but I do know that pretty much on average putting two engineers on a job makes the job take about 50% longer in total man hours and three engineers just about doubles it.

Probably not as bad with skilled labor because they don't have to go to as many meetings and phone calls and such.

With that many guys working at one time in one area you're going to need a really good foreman. Otherwise you will have chaos.
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Engineers?
My question is would there be work available at the peak of work. I assume there comes a point where it’s just not productive and that’s why I’m lost. I guess only if you don’t need to know this is where am I lacking of field installation experience hurts me,
 
My perspective... First, the job you describe, on a normal schedule would be 4-6 men IMO. The is one crew, with one foreman. Accelerating the schedule from that means lost productivity due to coordination issues, and additional supervision, due to my basic rule 6 men to a foreman. Along with additional time for the foremen to coordinate. So you are looking at probably 20% increase for loss of productivity plus and additional 1.25 men for the duration of the project. Hope this helps.
 
Strathead said:
My perspective... First, the job you describe, on a normal schedule would be 4-6 men IMO. The is one crew, with one foreman. Accelerating the schedule from that means lost productivity due to coordination issues, and additional supervision, due to my basic rule 6 men to a foreman. Along with additional time for the foremen to coordinate. So you are looking at probably 20% increase for loss of productivity plus and additional 1.25 men for the duration of the project. Hope this helps.
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It does thanks a lot. Would you have a working foreman with a few hours non working in the day or full time non working if crew of 9 needed?
 
It's useful to me to create a bar chart aligned with the job schedule. You may find that you will need more men when your doing above ground electrical than you will need when it's time to do the trim out. Create this chart and put your guys on another job when they are not needed, pull them from other jobs when they are needed. If you break the total job down to pieces of the job, you'll have a better idea of your manpower needs.
 
Unfortunately I think you will find that the more people you have working on the project the more time will be spent on supervision and administrative tasks.

One or two or three guys can usually figure things out by themselves even if they're not real efficient but once you start to get five or six guys on a job and they're not real efficient because they're missing parts or there's nothing to do because the plumber hasn't finished yet, it's going to start costing you money to have them standing around doing nothing.

This is where a good foreman makes you money by figuring out what they're going to be doing two or three days down the road and making sure that the parts and tools and equipment that they are going to need are there so they can accomplish what needs to be done two or three days down the road.
 
Alwayslearningelec said:
Well that's my question. I did that and come up with needing a average of ~9 men to complete. How would one determine if the job could take 9 men...would work be available?

What do you exactly mean push in schedule?
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What I mean by this if there using a CPM method which a lot do. Watch for the push method.
Most side walk superintendents are reactive which causes many issues when you CPM is push. This reactive attitude is bad for a push scheldule. Such as set task and set time frame based on a GC scheldule for a fixed time contract.
They will push forward based on this time line no matter what, which can cause all sorts of issues with an reactive supper.
Not only do you have to track you men you have to track the other trades looking for issues. Be quick to react. GC don't care most of the time they only cares about the start dates. Then tasks start to overlap and stretch out. I call it, trade stacking which is a labor killer.

You know 20 k sf is only 100 x 200
 
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