Practice Management Member Conversations

Greetings All:

I'm interested in how other firms do staffing planning. We have a staffing meeting every Monday morning, and review the staffing commitments for each project. However, there is no forward planning done at this meeting. We forecast net fee revenues for each project, but only convert these to FTEs using a basic average billable amount across all staff.

While we have Vision and use it for project budgeting, we are not using the Project Planning module. I know this does very detailed resource allocation reports, but I doubt that we will ever get all our PMs to really commit to doing detailed project plans, and without plans for every project, you can't really do resource allocation.

I'd love to hear from other firms that have simple staffing planning tools that work!

Thanks in advance for your comments.
Harry

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Harry Steinway Assoc. AIA
CO Architects
Los Angeles CA
-------------------------------------------

Harry,

Resource allocation and aligning talent with client needs. Thanks for raising the topic, it is the core issue of office management, and it seems to be a universal challenge.

My firm's CFO is outstanding, and she forces the Principals to focus on utilization. We strive for 65%. We use Ajera as our financial and project management software, and we're constantly developing more sophisticated ways of applying this tool. Currently, we have a Senior Associate working with our PM's every week to update their project status and staffing projections. He's very efficient, and this task doesn't take too long at all. He then presents a summary at our Management Team meetings, and this gives us sound, reliable data which we can use to make plan-forward staffing assignments. It's not a perfect process, but it's the best protocol we've devised so far.

~Robert.

-------------------------------------------
Robert Bostwick AIA
President, Director of Design
Bostwick Design Partnership
Cleveland OH
-------------------------------------------

All firms struggle with this to some degree or other.  The most challenging staff management is smaller projects where you have staff working on multiple projects.  The size of our projects require us to share staff on multiple projects.  We use two spreadsheets, one to look at the next four weeks out that project managers are required to fill out and update weekly, the other is a six month project projection which includes a percentage to reflect the likelyhood or status of contract negotiations.  We have a staff of 70 in our buildings group and meet to review our staffing needs every Monday.

I would also be interested if someone has better tools and processes managing staff for similar project work.

-------------------------------------------
Peter Leoschke AIA
Mead & Hunt Inc
Madison WI
-------------------------------------------

An additional tool that we have started to explore for staffing is MS Project.  It allows you to manage a variety of resources as well as schedule.

-------------------------------------------
Peter Leoschke AIA
Mead & Hunt Inc
Madison WI
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 06-03-2013 17:49
From: Peter Leoschke
Subject: Staffin Planning

All firms struggle with this to some degree or other.  The most challenging staff management is smaller projects where you have staff working on multiple projects.  The size of our projects require us to share staff on multiple projects.  We use two spreadsheets, one to look at the next four weeks out that project managers are required to fill out and update weekly, the other is a six month project projection which includes a percentage to reflect the likelyhood or status of contract negotiations.  We have a staff of 70 in our buildings group and meet to review our staffing needs every Monday.

I would also be interested if someone has better tools and processes managing staff for similar project work.

-------------------------------------------
Peter Leoschke AIA
Mead & Hunt Inc
Madison WI
-------------------------------------------

We also meet weekly to discuss project staffing and use an excel spreadsheet for forecasting purposes.  Project Managers are required to review and update the prior weeks staffing projections.  Because we are a relatively small firm (40 people) that does mainly interiors most of our projects have short durations so we pay particular attention to the week ahead of us and do the best we can to project as many weeks out as we can - typically no more than 4-5 weeks.  We also "share" staff - many staff members work on multiple projects per week with multiple deadlines.  We meet Thursday morning at 8:30am to review the projections, edit it on the spot, then publish them later in the day so everyone has an idea of what they will be working on for the upcoming week.

I wish there were a better way of doing this but this has worked for us pretty well.  The problems we encounter with this system are 1) when we are short staff there is a bit of arm wrestling and horse trading going on the get the staff that may be required on a particular project, 2) some project managers tend to over project their needs which leads to some staff members having less work while others are working their tails off.  If anyone has any other brilliant ideas around this topic I'd love to hear them.

-------------------------------------------
Winfield Roney AIA
ReelGrobman & Associates
San Jose CA
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 06-03-2013 17:49
From: Peter Leoschke
Subject: Staffin Planning

All firms struggle with this to some degree or other.  The most challenging staff management is smaller projects where you have staff working on multiple projects.  The size of our projects require us to share staff on multiple projects.  We use two spreadsheets, one to look at the next four weeks out that project managers are required to fill out and update weekly, the other is a six month project projection which includes a percentage to reflect the likelyhood or status of contract negotiations.  We have a staff of 70 in our buildings group and meet to review our staffing needs every Monday.

I would also be interested if someone has better tools and processes managing staff for similar project work.

-------------------------------------------
Peter Leoschke AIA
Mead & Hunt Inc
Madison WI
-------------------------------------------

One of the things I have found to be extremely useful is to review this information forensically. So, we'd have our workload meeting on Monday, and look at staffing and everyone would be at 40 hours, +/- 10% (on a normal week) and at 80 to 90% utilization. And, yes, there'd be horsetrading for who wanted who. But, essentially, everyone would show as pretty much full up. We do commercial interiors, too, so we always leave about 20% of our time open for new work.

In any event, come Friday and timesheet day, and 2 things happen - the guy who was supposed to be 90% billable with overtime, too, is 50% billable and he took a vacation day. And someone else who was at a regular 40 hours has now worked 55. The problem with the workload projections is they are based on self reporting, which is notoriously inaccurate. I'm the PM, and I want to make sure all my work is covered so I overestimate what I need. OR, I'm the PM and I don't want my workload to show tons of overtime, so I underestimate (or I'm just inexperienced and I estimate low OR I don't want my project to show all that time).

Coming back to the PM's with WHAT REALLY HAPPENED has made the PM's realize, there is no point in under or overestimating the projects. We need to do the best we can to keep it real. Yes, stuff does happen, but I think we're better predictors than we realize. I don't believe there is any point in doing these projections unless we are testing them against what actually happens - otherwise they are a PM's story of what they WANTED to happen.

And thanks to the guy earlier who gave props to his CFO. It's nice to hear that someone doesn't think all we do is pinch pennies! :-)

-------------------------------------------
Carol Gillen Assoc. AIA
DBA-W, Inc
Wellesley MA
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-04-2013 20:24
From: Winfield Roney
Subject: Staffin Planning

We also meet weekly to discuss project staffing and use an excel spreadsheet for forecasting purposes.  Project Managers are required to review and update the prior weeks staffing projections.  Because we are a relatively small firm (40 people) that does mainly interiors most of our projects have short durations so we pay particular attention to the week ahead of us and do the best we can to project as many weeks out as we can - typically no more than 4-5 weeks.  We also "share" staff - many staff members work on multiple projects per week with multiple deadlines.  We meet Thursday morning at 8:30am to review the projections, edit it on the spot, then publish them later in the day so everyone has an idea of what they will be working on for the upcoming week.

I wish there were a better way of doing this but this has worked for us pretty well.  The problems we encounter with this system are 1) when we are short staff there is a bit of arm wrestling and horse trading going on the get the staff that may be required on a particular project, 2) some project managers tend to over project their needs which leads to some staff members having less work while others are working their tails off.  If anyone has any other brilliant ideas around this topic I'd love to hear them.

-------------------------------------------
Winfield Roney AIA
ReelGrobman & Associates
San Jose CA
-------------------------------------------

Our process is to meet every other week to do a two week look ahead for detailed staffing assignments by project.  The project managers are responsible for communicating what staff they need to meet their project goals.  The work is captured in a simple excel spreadsheet.  For project financial management we do a detailed monthly review for every project using Deltek as our tool.  For gross and net projections we do a monthly update of a six month forecast.  The input is done by project managers into a common spreadsheet based on their projected schedules and percent complete on each project.  It is kept very basic to make it easy to update.

Regarding project planning:  I encourage you to participate in a free webinar being sponsored by the PMKC next week on June 13th.

Project Management Series: PROJECT WORK PLANNING.  Below is a link to the registration page. 

http://network.aia.org/PracticeManagement/Home/WebinarResources/

I have invited all of our project managers to attend with me to hopefully foster some great discussions on how we can improve out processes.

Donald

-------------------------------------------
Donald Simpson AIA
Director of Operations
KPS Group, Inc.
Birmingham AL
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 06-03-2013 17:49
From: Peter Leoschke
Subject: Staffin Planning

All firms struggle with this to some degree or other.  The most challenging staff management is smaller projects where you have staff working on multiple projects.  The size of our projects require us to share staff on multiple projects.  We use two spreadsheets, one to look at the next four weeks out that project managers are required to fill out and update weekly, the other is a six month project projection which includes a percentage to reflect the likelyhood or status of contract negotiations.  We have a staff of 70 in our buildings group and meet to review our staffing needs every Monday.

I would also be interested if someone has better tools and processes managing staff for similar project work.

-------------------------------------------
Peter Leoschke AIA
Mead & Hunt Inc
Madison WI
-------------------------------------------

Two great software tools we use in a firm of 16 employees with 5 architects is Ajera (an accounting / PM) and Asana (PM / project task management software). Both can be web based and used from anyway.  The Asana software is a fairly new software and a great tools to assign tasks, set deadlines, and see who is doing what.  -- Hope this helps -- thanks 

-------------------------------------------
Jack Seefeldt AIA
Senior Principal
JSA Architects, Inc.
Kerrville TX
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 06-05-2013 09:47
From: Donald Simpson
Subject: Staffin Planning

Our process is to meet every other week to do a two week look ahead for detailed staffing assignments by project.  The project managers are responsible for communicating what staff they need to meet their project goals.  The work is captured in a simple excel spreadsheet.  For project financial management we do a detailed monthly review for every project using Deltek as our tool.  For gross and net projections we do a monthly update of a six month forecast.  The input is done by project managers into a common spreadsheet based on their projected schedules and percent complete on each project.  It is kept very basic to make it easy to update.

Regarding project planning:  I encourage you to participate in a free webinar being sponsored by the PMKC next week on June 13th.

Project Management Series: PROJECT WORK PLANNING.  Below is a link to the registration page. 

http://network.aia.org/PracticeManagement/Home/WebinarResources/

I have invited all of our project managers to attend with me to hopefully foster some great discussions on how we can improve out processes.

Donald

-------------------------------------------
Donald Simpson AIA
Director of Operations
KPS Group, Inc.
Birmingham AL
-------------------------------------------

I have used Microsoft Project to set up a production schedule for each project.  I break down each sheet in the Construction Documents into tasks, time, and personnel.  Once it is set up, it is pretty easy to use and maintain.  Of course your PM's need to use it and update it on a regular basis.  I would update an example PDF, but the AIA site crashes everytime I try to attach the file.
Send me an email directly if you would like me to send it to you.  mike.clark@hhdesignbuild.com

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Michael Clark AIA
Director Of Design
H&H Design-Build
New Albany IN
-------------------------------------------

I worked extensively with MS Project, and it is a great tool that can also be used as a master project planning/staffing tool.  If staff are added, percentages of time allocated for each project, and the projects are used as tasks, you can link all of the projects.  This allows you to anticipate shortfalls in staffing, and identify when staff will be available for their next assignment.  When each project schedule is collapsed on the Master schedule, the results closely resemble the bar charts and excel spreadsheets used by many firms.  It does take some time to originally input all of the data, but updating and revising is not that onerous.

The problem that I had trying to get it implemented was that staffing meetings were more focused on assuring that all staff had something to do next week, rather than whether all projects were adequately - and properly - staffed.  Resistance to change, and complaints of "too much information" doomed my efforts.  Good luck.

-------------------------------------------
Alan Atkinson AIA
Atkinson Quality Control
Honolulu HI
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 06-04-2013 08:52
From: Michael Clark
Subject: Staffin Planning

I have used Microsoft Project to set up a production schedule for each project.  I break down each sheet in the Construction Documents into tasks, time, and personnel.  Once it is set up, it is pretty easy to use and maintain.  Of course your PM's need to use it and update it on a regular basis.  I would update an example PDF, but the AIA site crashes everytime I try to attach the file.
Send me an email directly if you would like me to send it to you.  mike.clark@hhdesignbuild.com

-------------------------------------------
Michael Clark AIA
Director Of Design
H&H Design-Build
New Albany IN
-------------------------------------------

Our firm has had similar issues with scheduling staff - many of which have been raised in this discussion.  Is anyone currently using Axium Ajera software to help with staff scheduling and project management?  We are starting the implementation phase and Axium recently developed a new module that solidified our decision to move forward with them.  Any experience by anyone?

-------------------------------------------
F. Michael Ayles AIA
Principal
Antinozzi Associates, PC
Bridgeport CT
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 06-05-2013 22:49
From: Alan Atkinson
Subject: Staffin Planning

I worked extensively with MS Project, and it is a great tool that can also be used as a master project planning/staffing tool.  If staff are added, percentages of time allocated for each project, and the projects are used as tasks, you can link all of the projects.  This allows you to anticipate shortfalls in staffing, and identify when staff will be available for their next assignment.  When each project schedule is collapsed on the Master schedule, the results closely resemble the bar charts and excel spreadsheets used by many firms.  It does take some time to originally input all of the data, but updating and revising is not that onerous.

The problem that I had trying to get it implemented was that staffing meetings were more focused on assuring that all staff had something to do next week, rather than whether all projects were adequately - and properly - staffed.  Resistance to change, and complaints of "too much information" doomed my efforts.  Good luck.

-------------------------------------------
Alan Atkinson AIA
Atkinson Quality Control
Honolulu HI
-------------------------------------------

We use P6 (Primavera). As a manager I am able to view forecasted utilization into the future. My department maintains a staff of 15. My operations manager takes less than one day per week to enter the previous weeks' timecards and predicted hours for any new contracts. We generate weekly utilization reports and monthly resource allocation forecasts. I would highly recommend you create hourly estimates by staff member for every proposal prepared by your office. Its easy to do on a spreadsheet. List the tasks down the left column and the personnel across the top row. This process is eye opening and generates clear historical data on the accuracy of your proposals.

Best,

-------------------------------------------
Gordon Rogers AIA
EAS Department Executive
Kitchell CEM, Inc.
Sacramento CA
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 06-04-2013 08:52
From: Michael Clark
Subject: Staffin Planning

I have used Microsoft Project to set up a production schedule for each project.  I break down each sheet in the Construction Documents into tasks, time, and personnel.  Once it is set up, it is pretty easy to use and maintain.  Of course your PM's need to use it and update it on a regular basis.  I would update an example PDF, but the AIA site crashes everytime I try to attach the file.
Send me an email directly if you would like me to send it to you.  mike.clark@hhdesignbuild.com

-------------------------------------------
Michael Clark AIA
Director Of Design
H&H Design-Build
New Albany IN
-------------------------------------------

In our experience, Vision- formerly Deltek, (with the staffing module) is, by far, the best tool for staff planning and budget tracking. Our firm currently applies BST to this task but i would not recommend it. With Vision, assuming one can get the PM's to play, resource loading and leveling is far more rationalized while also tracking project budgets. A holistic view of staff utilization, budget tracking and scheduling is a bit of long wish list, but Vision probably does this as well as can be expected. Additionally, one can export project plans to MS Project (see comment below) for an integrated view of upcoming deadlines and staffing conflicts.

-------------------------------------------
Eliezer Naor AIA
STV Inc.
Oakland CA
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 06-06-2013 11:12
From: Gordon Rogers
Subject: Staffin Planning

We use P6 (Primavera). As a manager I am able to view forecasted utilization into the future. My department maintains a staff of 15. My operations manager takes less than one day per week to enter the previous weeks' timecards and predicted hours for any new contracts. We generate weekly utilization reports and monthly resource allocation forecasts. I would highly recommend you create hourly estimates by staff member for every proposal prepared by your office. Its easy to do on a spreadsheet. List the tasks down the left column and the personnel across the top row. This process is eye opening and generates clear historical data on the accuracy of your proposals.

Best,

-------------------------------------------
Gordon Rogers AIA
EAS Department Executive
Kitchell CEM, Inc.
Sacramento CA
-------------------------------------------

My sincere apology to the millenials out there but. . . do you have any millennials in your office?  Put them together in a room (assuming you can gather them together at one time in one place).  Provide a snack and have them discuss any upcoming work they might just recall off the top of their heads.  After an hour or so, have them go back to work on whatever they want to work on.  At the end of the week, hand them a check and tell them they did a good job.  Repeat on Monday.


Robin Miller AIA
MSH Architects
Sioux Falls SD



 

Original Message:
Sent: 05-31-2013 12:50
From: Harry Steinway
Subject: Staffin Planning

Greetings All:

I'm interested in how other firms do staffing planning. We have a staffing meeting every Monday morning, and review the staffing commitments for each project. However, there is no forward planning done at this meeting. We forecast net fee revenues for each project, but only convert these to FTEs using a basic average billable amount across all staff.

While we have Vision and use it for project budgeting, we are not using the Project Planning module. I know this does very detailed resource allocation reports, but I doubt that we will ever get all our PMs to really commit to doing detailed project plans, and without plans for every project, you can't really do resource allocation.

I'd love to hear from other firms that have simple staffing planning tools that work!

Thanks in advance for your comments.
Harry

-------------------------------------------
Harry Steinway Assoc. AIA
CO Architects
Los Angeles CA
-------------------------------------------

Group,

A very easy method for project staff management is to create parallel horizontal bar charts for each active project and show them under a weekly time line.  The simplest method is to show the project phases such as Predesign, SD, DD, CD, BD, CCA, Post Const. or whatever phasing names you are using.  Include significant milestones such as presentations, submissions, etc.  You can make this complex or simple, but often simple will do the trick.  Then assign staff to each week for each project, for instance, Week 12 may have 2.5 Drftr, 0.5 desr, 0.2 princ, 1.0 spec, etc. assigned to a school job. You can load the data from your project budget. One assumes you will be doing this on a computer using Excel or a more sophisticated management software, and if so, you can assign hourly rates for actual personnel or hourly averages for personnel in each group.  Instead of adding down so that the totals for the week are at the bottom, show them at the top. Then each Friday or Monday gather the PMs to update the past week and their expectations of the the next two weeks.  This will give you an instantaneous graphic picture of your staffing needs, shortfalls and over staffing.   If you see 400 total hours for all projects in week, and you only have 8 technical personnel, prepare for overtime or to move some people around. It's really quite easy. Once you get the hang of it, factor in known and assumed vacations, client slowdowns, etc. This will help you keep the "takt" portion of "project flow" moving more smoothly.

I learned this system when I was an Air force pilot and we had to depict missions flown and sorties projected with all crew members, available aircraft, fuel, etc.  During the neolithic age in my Architectural office in Albuquerque, we had a large plastic chart on the wall (reminiscent of my military days) with colored tape depicting the design phases (green was always SD phase and red was always the CD phase, I am not sure if this was caused by an emotional or financial response) and we actually used grease pencils to show manpower requirements.  More efficient tools are certainly available, but having it on the wall allowed everyone to see what was up and to correct inaccuracies. After all, architects and engineers are visual. If you have a large format color printer, try it out.

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James Brown AIA
Scottsdale, AZ
-------------------------------------------

Hi All,

You might want to take a look at Newforma's Project Analyzer. It works well with Vision. There are some good tools to manage immediate assignments and forecast future needs. There is a dashboard approach to present other project financial metrics for PMs and firm principals. I think it would be a solution for any size design firm.

We use NPA for most projects - but we brought it in specifically to help with the interiors and short-burn projects that were difficult to plan in Vision Resource Planning. Our approach is a hybrid: NPA for most project planning, VRP for the complex project task-based planning. All VRP data can be uploaded into Project Analyzer to get a consolidated view of staffing.

Regards,
Ken
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Kenneth Young AIA
Chief Information Officer
HOK
San Francisco, CA
-------------------------------------------

For a small to medium sized office we get along quite will with a mix of Omni Plan (http://www.omnigroup.com/omniplan, unfortunately only on MacOS), and Asana.

Omni Plan can get as detailed as you'd like, assigning each of your team members to a single task or an overall series (construction documentation). You can assign an hourly rate for that individual along with a percentage of time, and sort information a variety of ways by projects, individuals, tasks. It helps track the project over time in relationship to budget... It costs under $100 per license, and is entirely cloud based so it can be updated at anytime by anyone.

http://www.omnigroup.com/omniplan

Asana is a great free tool to assign tasks to individuals and manage projects at a more micro level. I believe it was mentioned previously in the forum.

https://asana.com/

We also have a weekly meeting, but if everything is running smoothly the time dedicated to projects is very minimal.

-------------------------------------------
Evelyn Lee AIA
Senior Strategist
MKThink
San Francisco CA
strategy.mkthink.com


Head Curator
Practice of Architecture
www.practiceofarchitecture.com
-------------------------------------------

If you cannot get PMs to do detailed project plans, you have a top management problem, and no software system will help solve your problem. PMs - and all employees in general - will do what Principals constantly & consistently require, review, monitor & use for evaluations (e.g., raises, bonuses & promotions). Only when you get Principals' support & follow-through will you get detailed project plans.

Accomplishing that, then you can use Vision to its true, and not cheap, potential. I am not even saying that you have to use the full work breakdown structure that Vision espouses. Even if all staff are only added to projects at the top level over all the necessary time periods, at least it will give you total workloads by individual so that you can see who is over-scheduled and who does not have enough work to do going forward. Just from that, people can be shifted around, assigned to projects needing staff, etc., and you can do your resource allocations.

But first you have to get your Principals to start doing the management part of their jobs ....

Mike Webber
Michael A. Webber
A/E Finance
801 67th St.
Downers Grove, IL 60516 USA
C 1-630.732.5423
mawebber@aefinance.net
www.aefinance.net

-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 08-05-2013 20:34
From: Evelyn Lee
Subject: Staffin Planning

For a small to medium sized office we get along quite will with a mix of Omni Plan (http://www.omnigroup.com/omniplan, unfortunately only on MacOS), and Asana.

Omni Plan can get as detailed as you'd like, assigning each of your team members to a single task or an overall series (construction documentation). You can assign an hourly rate for that individual along with a percentage of time, and sort information a variety of ways by projects, individuals, tasks. It helps track the project over time in relationship to budget... It costs under $100 per license, and is entirely cloud based so it can be updated at anytime by anyone.

http://www.omnigroup.com/omniplan

Asana is a great free tool to assign tasks to individuals and manage projects at a more micro level. I believe it was mentioned previously in the forum.

https://asana.com/

We also have a weekly meeting, but if everything is running smoothly the time dedicated to projects is very minimal.

-------------------------------------------
Evelyn Lee AIA
Senior Strategist
MKThink
San Francisco CA
strategy.mkthink.com


Head Curator
Practice of Architecture
www.practiceofarchitecture.com
-------------------------------------------

In our firm of about 55 employees, there are about 10 -12 principals and/or project managers that meet monthly to discuss staffing needs.  They use a custom Excel spreadsheet to forecast staff needs for the next 4 months.  They are given the previous month's spreadsheet for markup before meeting.  For each active project, project under contract, but not started, and each highly probable project to be awarded to us, they project their staff needs by person, or type of position, and hours per pay period with 80 hours assumed as full time for one 1/2 month pay period.  To project the time needs, they consider fee budgets (i.e. total, spent, and remaining) and time schedules.  All individual data is then compiled into the master and totaled, that in turn is sorted by employee and by project.  The results will show where there is overbooking of individuals and understaffing of needs which is then used to negotiate how to meet needs. 
-------------------------------------------
Craig Hess AIA
Elness Swenson Graham Architects, Inc.
Maplewood MN
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 08-07-2013 20:09
From: Michael Webber
Subject: Staffin Planning

If you cannot get PMs to do detailed project plans, you have a top management problem, and no software system will help solve your problem. PMs - and all employees in general - will do what Principals constantly & consistently require, review, monitor & use for evaluations (e.g., raises, bonuses & promotions). Only when you get Principals' support & follow-through will you get detailed project plans.

Accomplishing that, then you can use Vision to its true, and not cheap, potential. I am not even saying that you have to use the full work breakdown structure that Vision espouses. Even if all staff are only added to projects at the top level over all the necessary time periods, at least it will give you total workloads by individual so that you can see who is over-scheduled and who does not have enough work to do going forward. Just from that, people can be shifted around, assigned to projects needing staff, etc., and you can do your resource allocations.

But first you have to get your Principals to start doing the management part of their jobs ....

Mike Webber
Michael A. Webber
A/E Finance
801 67th St.
Downers Grove, IL 60516 USA
C 1-630.732.5423
mawebber@aefinance.net
www.aefinance.net

-------------------------------------------

Having been responsible for weekly/monthly staff planning for many firms, the methods varied depending on the size of firm and the type of projects performed.  In general it's easier to project workloads when you have a few longer duration projects vs. many shorter ones. Usually we all have a mix. 

Vision, Excel, MS Projects, etc., all have there place.   At a very large E/A firm we attempted a process improvement initiative to enhance the projections with custom written software and tie them to projected future billings out more than a month (a noble and expensive cause).  We looked back and analyzed how timesheets matched our projections, however even what we thought were our best efforts had very high standards of deviation!   We abandoned the initiative when we found the problem: Our clients had this uncanny need to stop and start their projects!

After that it became apparent it is more an art than a science. My recommendation is to get the best information about the projects on a constant basis, use what software works quickly, so as to never spend more than 5% of your time doing projections. Note: This means some weeks may require readjustments daily and be 30%. other weeks can be 0%.
-------------------------------------------
Donald Koppy AIA
Architect
Donald A. Koppy, Architect
Crestwood MO
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 08-08-2013 18:47
From: Craig Hess
Subject: Staffin Planning


In our firm of about 55 employees, there are about 10 -12 principals and/or project managers that meet monthly to discuss staffing needs.  They use a custom Excel spreadsheet to forecast staff needs for the next 4 months.  They are given the previous month's spreadsheet for markup before meeting.  For each active project, project under contract, but not started, and each highly probable project to be awarded to us, they project their staff needs by person, or type of position, and hours per pay period with 80 hours assumed as full time for one 1/2 month pay period.  To project the time needs, they consider fee budgets (i.e. total, spent, and remaining) and time schedules.  All individual data is then compiled into the master and totaled, that in turn is sorted by employee and by project.  The results will show where there is overbooking of individuals and understaffing of needs which is then used to negotiate how to meet needs. 
-------------------------------------------
Craig Hess AIA
Elness Swenson Graham Architects, Inc.
Maplewood MN
-------------------------------------------







Original Message:
Sent: 08-07-2013 20:09
From: Michael Webber
Subject: Staffin Planning

If you cannot get PMs to do detailed project plans, you have a top management problem, and no software system will help solve your problem. PMs - and all employees in general - will do what Principals constantly & consistently require, review, monitor & use for evaluations (e.g., raises, bonuses & promotions). Only when you get Principals' support & follow-through will you get detailed project plans.

Accomplishing that, then you can use Vision to its true, and not cheap, potential. I am not even saying that you have to use the full work breakdown structure that Vision espouses. Even if all staff are only added to projects at the top level over all the necessary time periods, at least it will give you total workloads by individual so that you can see who is over-scheduled and who does not have enough work to do going forward. Just from that, people can be shifted around, assigned to projects needing staff, etc., and you can do your resource allocations.

But first you have to get your Principals to start doing the management part of their jobs ....

Mike Webber
Michael A. Webber
A/E Finance
801 67th St.
Downers Grove, IL 60516 USA
C 1-630.732.5423
mawebber@aefinance.net
www.aefinance.net

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