Understanding Crew Availability

One of the first processes performed each schedule period is estimating the available capacity of the crew to complete scheduled work during the schedule period. The crew capacity is typically broken down into a number of lead crafts indicating availability to work on the backlog of unscheduled work.

The crew availability is based on the expected availability of the individual resources within the crew and craft and reduced by a load percent. The load percent is a target value used to reduce the expected availability of the crew and craft work group to allow for unscheduled events in order to achieve a realistic target for the work group. As the crew and craft's estimating and capacity to complete scheduled work improves, the load percent is adjusted to maintain a realistic target.

The Crew Schedule Metrics program will be used to define crew availability. When defining availability, the system supplies the schedule pattern and the next schedule period that needs to be defined for the crew. As you proceed to enter data for the crew, the system creates a line for each lead craft defined in the resource master for each individual associated with the crew. The system will calculate the resource available hours for the crew and craft by totaling the working hours for the individuals with the same crew and craft combination for the schedule period. The crew standard hours, available hours, and load percent can then be entered for each lead craft. At a minimum, you should maintain the current, next, and following crew and craft availability metric information. The copy option will copy the details for the selected row and supply the dates for the next schedule period not currently defined.