Construction workforce planning is a vital component of an organization. Unfortunately, many people fail to understand the concept and its prominence. Efficiency and profitability are important in construction companies. And they are fighting tooth and nail to achieve both the elements and grow their business forward. Implementing construction workforce planning can help businesses achieve both efficiency and profitability. In this comprehensive article, we help you understand the basics and importance of planning and executing the construction workforce, and why it is such a critical part of the process.
What Is Construction Workforce Planning?
Construction workforce planning is a continuous process that focuses on constantly reviewing the existing resources, ascertaining that the supply of workforce meets the project’s demand, forecasts recruitments, and ensures the project also meets the workforce’s demand. Primarily, it ensures the efficient use of the team and balances the resources to avoid errors. And to make the planning process more streamlined and efficient, companies are using construction workforce software. It automates the manual tasks and makes the planning process more profitable for the business. Construction workforce planning focuses on two important factors that include:
- It is important this planning is used as the subset to the larger strategic plan of the organization. Moreover, it should be executed in the context of various factors that can affect the timeline of the project.
- The construction industry is more vulnerable to changes than other sectors. When working in an environment that is constantly changing, early planning and adaptability become more important.
- The construction workforce planning must encompass current data and trends to understand better the factors that can impact the business internally and externally.
- The plan should be created to offer a clear overview of the resources the company already has, what it requires, and how much it will take to complete the gap.
- Using project planning solutions software helps increase project execution certainty by a high degree while also reducing risk. Using these solutions improves efficiency and helps keep the project moving along smoothly.
Why Is Proper Construction Workforce Planning Important?
Following are the reason why every construction firm should consider thorough and proper construction workforce planning:
Reduced Workers Downtime
Construction companies get greatly affected when the workforce is not working. And it goes beyond them not working while being allocated on the job site but also includes the paid downtime when staff is not allocated properly. When planning is done using an inaccurate series of spreadsheets, employees can fall into the cracks and cost companies a substantial amount of downtime. It will directly impact the overall profitability of the project.
Accurate construction workforce planning enables the operations teams to monitor team members closely, allowing better job allocations. Additionally, proper planning also assists in identifying the gaps between project availability. Contracts can easily determine when the workforce is over-allocated or under-allocated.
Optimized Workforce Management
Contractors have to regularly schedule workforce meetings to stay updated on the progress of the project. These meetings also keep them connected to the core team of operations like managers, estimators, etc. Scheduled workforce meetings enable the team to look at the problems and strategies from multiple angles, assess various caveats, and come up with the best viable solutions. Moreover, it allows the leaders to delegate meeting tasks and acquire inputs from various stakeholders to create an efficient workforce planning process, eliminate the gaps and facilitate productivity.
Reduces The Pointless Expenses
The construction industry thrives on its human resources. But there are a plethora of vital responsibilities that lead to administrative errors that affect the organization’s objectives. Construction workflow planning tools enable automation of administrative processes, thereby reducing the chances of errors, lower costs and offer more time for management to deal with issues and perform tasks.
This increases overall efficiency and productivity. Effective planning and management assist in monitoring schedules, staff reduction, and forecasting. And these elements can help organizations boost ROI. Furthermore, construction workforce management assists in reducing duplication of tasks and ensures the efforts of staff are put in the right places.
Improves Employees’ Management
Once the organization has hired talented workers, they should focus on retaining them; this is a part of construction workforce planning. A survey of training and market patterns can assist in identifying places that are challenging to fill. When a worker quits the organization, it can harm the project’s schedule.
In organizations with high turnover, planning can help in checking the reason why employees are leaving. Additionally, management can set up procedures to retain workers. The company can focus more on staff maintenance and improve employee retention.
Focused On Project Deadlines
Construction workforce planning leverages powerful tools to boost transparency and keep the team aligned with the goals of the project and company. While goals vary from one project to another, completing on time and staying on the budget are common across them all.
Proper planning allows the team to visualize the project and its phases and deadlines. Moreover, it also assists in understanding the effect of the workforce plan on the completion date of the project. Preparation of accurate construction estimates is also a crucial part of the project and it should never be neglected. Learn more about the preparation of cost estimates for construction projects.
Evaluate The Competency To Take On Future Projects
One of the primary aspects of construction workforce planning is forecasting. Accuracy in forecasting can assist in keeping recruitment practices based on the optimized capacity planning data and offer clarity over the effect of future bids. The ability to take on future projects depends on the sales team, but this is not easy to predict. Mostly, the contractors base the forecasting on their gut feeling. Why is forecasting important?
This is because it is a detailed process that encompasses your active projects, the capacity of the existing workforce, and recreating scenarios based on the probabilities of winning the bids. It will help in determining how the future bids will affect the workforce plan. Construction management solutions can assist in tracking the workers’ performance and create a better understanding of their performance. Moreover, it can also help contractors figure out the workforce they will need to complete the overall project,
The Bottom Line
Construction workforce management is a challenging task. But combining proper planning, software and tools can help the team to eliminate the inefficiencies and delays. Effective planning at the beginning will help the team accomplish their objectives in a timely manner and contribute to the organizational goals.
