In this article:
Utilization is a powerful tool to help you optimize staffing projects and efficiently manage employees to achieve peak performance on every job.
Creating a New Workforce Assignment
As soon as an Opportunity is entered into Buildr and given a start and end date, you have the ability to start assigning shifts to employees. For this example, we created an Opportunity called, "Rincon Marine Biology Research Lab".
In the Opportunity, navigate to the Workforce Tab and select "Create Assignment."
Assign the Shift Start/End dates, the Role, and set the Utilization Percentage.
In this example, we set the utilization to 50%. This means that 50% of their time is allocated to this project. So for example, 20 hours in a 40 hour work week would go to this job.
If the job requires 100% of their time, then set it to 100%. If 25% of their time, then 25%, etc. You can also go back and update this information later if you anticipate this changing.
After you finish entering your workforce assignments, you will see a summary of these under the Workforce tab in the Opportunity, and the utilization for each employee will be visible in its own column:
From there, you can click "Assign Employees" in order to pick a specific person to fill each role. You can also do this by navigating to Workforce > Assignments, and by clicking on a specific Shift.
The Assignment Modal
When you assign a shift, you will see your list of employees on the left side as shown in the image below. Search for and select an employee to see their Availability and determine if assigning them to this specific Opportunity will work. Compare availability and utilization to see who will be the best fit for the assignment.
Explanation of the Colors in the Assignment Modal
When updating or adding an employee, you will see the employees availability. The list of employees on the left side has a visual representation of each employees availability. If you click on that employee, more details will show up on the right side.
The green bars indicate that assigning the employee to the shift will work because the total utilization will be 100% or less during that time period. Here are some examples of when the green will show up in the Availability window:
The employee is not assigned to any projects
The employee is assigned to a project that requires less than 100% utilization AND the shift you are trying to assign does not cause the employee to exceed 100% utilization. So for example, if they are assigned to Project 1 at 50% utilization and you are trying to assign them to a shift on Project 2 that requires 50% utilization (or less), then the bar will appear green.
The gray bars indicate that the assignment will not work because the assignment will cause the employee's utilization to exceed 100% during this time OR they are already 100% utilized on other projects.
The blue stripe bars indicate that the employee is available but assigned to other pursuits during that time period. Pursuits are not guaranteed, so the blue bar means that assigning the employee to the shift works tentatively, but this may change if the opportunity moves from a pursuit stage to the Won stage.
Accessing Assignments
If we navigate to Workforce > Assignments, then we will see that the role has been filled and employee's name is listed under the Rincon Marine Biology Research Lab Opportunity.
If you click on the shift (the purple bar with the Employees name and shift), it will pull up the Assignment Modal that we saw previously.
Availability Section in the Assignment Modal Explained
If you hover over any of the availability bars or bars that represent individual opportunities in the Assignment Modal, more specific information shows up. For this example, we assigned a new employee to the Project Manager shift on the Rincon Marine Biology Research Laboratory opportunity.
In the image below, we pulled up the Assignment Modal and moused over the "Northstar Building B" project. We see the Stage, Start and End Dates, Utilization %, and Role for the employee on this opportunity.
This employee is 100% utilized on the Northstar Building B project, which will be reflected in the total utilization percentage.
If we mouse over the Rincon Marine Biology Research Lab project (shown in the image below), we see that Meghan is assigned to 50% utilization. This project overlaps with the Northstar Building B project (which requires 100% utilization), so the total utilization will be over 100% if we win the opportunity.
Simply choose another employee on the left side of the Assignment Modal to resolve the over-allocation issue.