Crew planning and the crew you still need

Crew planning turns the crew lines on your tasks into a matrix: one row per trade, one column per day or week, for the open project. It shows how many people the plan calls for, which of them nobody has been found for yet, and where the plan asks for more than you have.

Where to find it#

Open a project, then use any of these:

• the sidebar's Crew planning row, under Resources;
• the project's Crew planning tab, beside its Work and Dashboard tabs;
• Tools ▾ → Crew planning in the editor.

For the tabs beside it, see Work, My tasks and Calendar and the Dashboard.

The page head names the project, the window and the units, for example "headcount/day", or "crew-days/wk" when you look by week. Its Project: picker switches to another project and keeps you on Crew planning. Open schedule takes you back to the project's editor. Book people, beside it, opens People on this project, where you book its people day by day; the editor's Tools ▾ has the same Book people. Both show only in a connected company, to someone who can edit the project, and never on a student's copy or a class board in Training.

How these fit together#

The three pages under Resources follow the order a team works in:

1. 1
   Roster & equipment sets up the list: who and what your company has, the people with their trades and the machines with their types.
2. 2
   Crew planning, this page, plans the counts: how many of each trade one project needs, per day, against how many you have.
3. 3
   People books the names: it puts named people from the list on tasks, day by day, across projects.

Crew planning counts trades (how many carpenters); People books names (which carpenter).

Crew lines on tasks#

The numbers come from each task's Crew column. Write who the task needs in plain words:

• 3 is three people;
• 1 foreman, 2 laborer is a foreman and two laborers;
• laborer x2 and 2x laborer also mean two laborers.

Add ? to demand you can't staff yet: 2 carpenter? means two carpenters are needed and nobody is assigned. The grid shows that cell in a warning color, so a hiring need stays visible instead of hiding in a normal-looking plan. Equipment works the same way through its own column; see Equipment on tasks.

To pick instead of type, click the ▾ at the right edge of an active Crew cell, press Shift+F2, or press Alt+↓ while typing in the cell. The CREW section of the popup lists your company's trades and people. The same picker sits in a task's pane on People (Add a trade or person…); a line added there counts here like a typed one.

The matrix#

The CREW section has one row per trade, sorted by demand, with a colored dot for each trade. Each cell is that day's headcount, shaded against the row's own busiest day. A totals row sits underneath.

• Days and Weeks switch the columns between single days and Monday weeks of crew-days.
• The window buttons are 2, 3, 4, 8, 13 and 26 weeks (2 wk to 26 wk), plus Full for the whole project. The ‹ and › arrows step the window earlier or later.
• A cell with ?-marked demand reads like 3 (+2?): the plan calls for five, three staffed and two marked ? that nobody has been found for yet.
• Once a task has people booked by name, its still-to-find count goes by the day: someone booked on only some of the task's days fills its line on those days alone.
• Filter trades and types narrows the rows by name.

When the project carries equipment, an EQUIPMENT section sits under the crew, one row per machine type, built the same way. Sections shows Both, Crew or Equipment; it only appears once the project has equipment or your company has a fleet.

Have: the crew you can put on the project#

The Have column is where you record how many of each trade this project actually has. Leave it blank when you don't know, enter 0 for "we have none", and clear it to forget. Use Add trade… under the matrix to list a trade by name with its count.

On any day where the plan calls for more of a listed trade than you have, the cell turns red, in the matrix, the totals row and the Gantt crew band. That is your signal to move people over or hire. A blank Have never flags anything.

A note under the matrix keeps the two numbers apart: "Have is what you can put on this project; Demand is what the plan calls for — the two never merge." Have saves with the project and undoes like any other edit.

The side pane#

Select a row to open its details in the side pane (Details shows or hides the pane):

• TRADE or TYPE: the total for the window, the peak day and any still-to-find count.
• HAVE for a trade, or IN FLEET for a machine type.
• SHARED COVERAGE, when tasks in a coverage set share this trade.
• FILLED BY: the people or machines actually assigned to this trade on this project. You can't assign here; press Shift+F2 on a task's row in the Schedule to fill a slot, or use Book people to book people by the day.

When your company is connected and you haven't entered a Have yet, the pane's HAVE section for a trade offers a suggestion from the roster, such as use 4: the active people on the roster with that trade. When the project belongs to a group, its tooltip breaks the number down into people in that group, people at company level, and people you would borrow from another group. Nothing turns red until you click it. Once you click, it is an ordinary Have entry you can edit or clear.

Equipment rows#

An equipment row's lead column is read-only: it shows how many units of that type are in the company fleet and how many are down, for example 6 in fleet · 1 down. That count is company-wide, not per project, so equipment rows never turn red here. To see a machine booked on two projects on the same day, open the Resource assignments report.

Printing#

Print prints exactly what is on screen: the same days or weeks, the same sections and filter. It prints in landscape and scales down to fit the page width when the matrix is wider than a sheet. A stamp names the project, the window, the day it prints, and days or weeks, and says how far the page was scaled.

Who can use it#

Anyone who can open a project in the editor can use its Crew planning page, in local mode and the demo too. Field accounts can't open it. The roster suggestion and fleet counts need a connected company with people and equipment on its Roster & equipment page. See Who can see and do what.

Good to know#

• Have on this page is only for this project. The cross-project Crew & equipment demand report reads the company roster and fleet instead.
• A Draft project shows a Draft pill here; see Draft and Publish.
• You can list up to 50 trades in Have.