Overview:

IN PROGRESS...

Resource Forecasting is optional in the monthly Contract Forecasting. This feature assists forecasting out the details of Labour and Equipment requirements to deliver the job.

This extension to forecasting allows you to plan out your Labour "Manning" and equipment requirement and project it out over the construction programme. This can be done for both internal and external resources.

The outputs of this feature are visibility of manpower or equipment required per week for a project and the expected costs. This will then feed into the Forecast and be incorporated into the Forecast Final cost calculation.

Quick Setup Guide:

A quick guide to enable Resource forecasting attached below:

Screen Guide:

Steps to create Labour Forecast and Plant Forecast:

Once the Forecast has been created for the selected period the Labour Forecast and Plant Forecast buttons take you to their respective forecasting screens. By clicking on these buttons and then saving, your Plant Forecast and Labour Forecast will be created.

The combined Costs from Labour and Plant Forecasts will feed into the main Forecast and be reflected in the column Resource Forecast. Drilling into the Labour or Plant Forecast from the main forecast using the hyperlinks in blue under the Resource Forecast column, allows you to only see that section of the job in the Resource Forecast screen. Notice the filters used at the top right of the screen.

External and Internal resources can be included in both Resource Forecasts.

Forecast Labour:

Works in conjunction with a monthly forecast and within the Month/Period snapshot. Labour Forecast allows you to forecast at weekly intervals. Why weekly? because when trying to manage man hours or people resources, the standard is a weekly calculation.                                                 

When expanding the Job in the screen, only sections of the project that have 'By Cost Category' balance of budget type, are shown. Each line can be expanded or drill down to Activity level, or Employee Class level in those cases where internal labour is being used. When External Labour is being used, no Employee Class will be selected. The Work Centres and Activities are the ones corresponding to those used in the Budget.

Use the New Line link to add a new line. When adding new line in the Labour Forecast:
When the activity is a Time type of activity, it will be used for internal employees, who are linked to an Employee Class. In this cases an Employee Class can be selected and the Rate will default from that Employee Class. You can then populate how many hours per week this resource will be needed, and add some comments to explain what that resource is: whether is Hours per week for 1 operator, or 4 operators for example. Note that the Hrs/Wk quantity can be defined per resource or for the sum of resources by employee class; so it is important to add comments. The calculation for the Labour Cost column is: Rate * Hrs/Wk * Sum of Weeks

Example:

Columns:

• Budget Qty is populated with the quantity from the corresponding Budget line.

• Budget is populated with the budget $ to spend on the project defined in the budget (down to Activity Code or employee class if used).

Forecast Plant:

It is very similar to Labour Forecast, with the difference that you can select specific plant items.

Internal and external equipment can be used. On Internal plant, a rate can be selected, when there are multiple rates in that Plant item. For external Plant items, a manual rate is to be entered.

Screen Guide for Labour and Plant Forecact screens:

Forecast displays 12 weeks by default. And the blue arrows at the top next to ‘Display From’, allow for navigating forwards or backwards to the future weeks. The Future column will display the number of weeks that have been used in this forecast. You can forecast several month in the future if required. All forecasted weeks (even when not visible on the current screen) will be reflected in the Labour/Plant Qty and Labour/Plant Totals columns respectively.

After saving the Labour Forecast or Plant Forecast, and going back to the main Forecast screen, the Resource Forecast value will be updated and will reduce/increase the Balance of Budget.

•  Forecast From displays the year/period this forecast has been created for.

• Display From is used to navigate through the future weeks of the project.

• The blue arrows allow you to see further weeks in the screen. And importantly, the Future column shows if any values has been entered in future weeks that are not visible in the current displayed period.

Next Steps: