Plan crews and equipment for the weeks ahead

By the end of this workflow every task says which trades and machines it needs, the people and units filling them are named, and you can see, day by day, where the plan asks for more than you have.

Who does this#

Project managers, schedulers and superintendents: Editors and Admins. A company admin keeps the company's roster and fleet up to date. See Who can see and do what.

Before you start#

• The project's tasks are in and dated (see Create a project and build its schedule).
• To name specific people and machines, your company's roster and fleet are on the Roster & equipment page. A company admin adds people and units there, one at a time, with Paste list…, or from a payroll or fleet file with Import file…, and keeps the trade and machine-type lists under Manage → Catalogs…. Adding someone to the roster doesn't create an account or use a license.

Steps#

1. 1
   Enter the crew. In the grid's Crew column, type what each task needs: 3, 1 foreman, 2 laborer or laborer x2. Trades are your own words, and Ganttry suggests the ones you have used before, plus your company's people. To pick from a list instead, click the ▾ at the right edge of the Crew cell, or press Alt+↓ while typing, and use Add a trade or person… in the popup's CREW section.
2. 2
   Mark what you can't staff yet. Add ? to an entry: 2 carpenter? means two carpenters needed and nobody found. The cell turns to a warning color, so hiring needs stay visible.
3. 3
   Add the equipment. Show the hidden Equipment column (right-click a column header, Add or show columns…). Then open Crew & equipment… from a task's right-click menu, or press Shift+F2, and pick a machine type and how many. A ? marks a machine you still need. Equipment on tasks explains the popup.
4. 4
   Name who and what. In the same Crew & equipment popup, press + Assign person or + Assign machine on a slot and pick from the list. Your own group's people and units come first. A machine that is down, or a person who is away, shows with the reason and can't be picked. Press Apply. This books a person for the whole task; to book someone for only some of its days, use People.

5. 5
   Open Crew planning. Press the project's Crew planning tab in the top row (see Crew planning and the crew you still need). The page shows one row per trade and one column per day, shaded by how many people each day needs. Choose Days or Weeks, and a window from two weeks to the whole project. A cell with (+2?) still needs two people nobody has found.
6. 6
   Say what you have. Type in the Have column how many of each trade you can put on this project; leave it blank if you don't know, or type 0 for none. Every day where the plan asks for more than you have turns red, in the matrix, in the totals row and in the chart's crew band. With your company roster set up, an empty Have offers a suggestion from the roster; nothing turns red until you accept it.

7. 7
   Check the machines. The EQUIPMENT section below lists each machine type the same way. Its first column shows how many your company's fleet has and how many are down.
8. 8
   See who fills a line. Select a trade or machine row. The side pane shows its total and busiest day over the window, what you have, and under FILLED BY the people or units assigned to it on this project.
9. 9
   Print it. Print prints exactly what is on screen, in landscape, stamped with the project, the window and the day it prints.

Good to know#

• The crew band. Crew in the editor's toolbar draws a crew histogram under the Gantt chart, colored by trade, with crew still needed hatched. Its expand button opens Crew planning.
• Two tasks, one crew. When two tasks really share the same people, join them in a coverage set so the demand counts them once. See Report on progress, crews and equipment.
• Equipment you type or paste. 2x Excavator is two excavators. Unlike crew, a bare number at the front is part of the machine's name: 2 Roller is one machine type called 2 Roller.
• Double-booked within the project. Picking a unit already assigned elsewhere in this project on the same days warns you, naming the task, but doesn't stop you. Conflicts across projects show in Resource assignments on the Reports page.
• Assigned people see it. Assigning a person linked to an account also adds them to the task's Assigned To, so it appears in their My tasks (see Work, My tasks and Calendar). A booking on People does the same.
• Book by the day. Book people at the top of Crew planning, or Tools ▾ → Book people, opens this project on People: who works on it each day, and where else they are booked. It is there in a connected company, on a project you can edit, but not on a student's copy or a class board in Training. See Book people day by day.
• Saved crews. A crew that travels together, usually a foreman and their members, can be kept on the Saved crews tab of Roster & equipment. On People, Book crew… books them onto a project's open work in one step.
• Tools to bring. The hidden Tools column takes a comma list such as Level, String line, Form oil: a checklist printed on the crew handout, not tracked like equipment. See Equipment on tasks.
• Copies plan clean. Copying a task, copying a whole project or making a template keeps what crew and equipment each task needs, and its tools. Copying a task drops the people and machines filling its slots but keeps its Assigned To; a whole-project copy (Make a copy…, or New project from this in History) and a template drop both.
• Across projects. For demand across several projects against the whole company's roster, see Report on progress, crews and equipment.