Topic: 114 billable hrs./mo, eh ? Justify that .

I`m assuming this is the difference etween *hours worked* and *hours billable*, like not charging for graphics experimentation, brainstorming, and stuff, but if I know you, Doc, you`ll do 114 hours next week. Seems like a big drop.



Cell245

Yea I was going to ask you about this too.

=)

-Jestah
Cell 277

This calculation is based on my time at the big consulting companies, they've got this down to a science! OK, lets asssume a short month, with 4 weeks at 40 hours/week, that makes 160 hours of "work time". These numbers can be extended, mainly by toruturing your employees into working longer hours, weekends, etc., but in general, seen over a long period of time, it averages out to 160 hours each month. (Months are longer than 4 weeks, but think holidays and vacations, etc... It works out.)

The magic number for consultants is the "utilization rate". This is just the percentage of hours that people actually manage to *bill*, as opposed to how many they "work". Many companies have an actual utilization rate of 40-50%, sometimes lower, but the magic number to shoot for is 70%. Some dot-com-boom companies tried to boost productivity by demanding that people raise this rate even higher in order to increase profitability, but it never lasts, people burn out and quit if driven this way for too long.

So! Get out your calculators! 160 hours * 70% = 112 hours/month.

Did I say 114 in that other post? That was wrong, the true number is 112. To be fair, what you really need to do is figure out the number of working days in the year, multiply by the hours in a day, and then divide by 12, but this is a calculation that can work across a large group of people, and that you can actually hope to meet.

For myself, over long periods of time, I routinely average more in the range of 80-90% utilization, but average me out with a bunch of people less insane and it still averages out to 70% at it's very best. I've personally done periods as short as a *week* with 112 billable hours in them, but after a week like that I'm shot for at least a week, good for nothing more than reading Dilbert and playing silly web games.

Your pal, -doc-

Cool. I understand. The 40 hr. work week is a foreign concept to me, but I believe they DO happen.
So, this means that I should be screwing off about 30% of my time at work. I knew I was doing something wrong.



Cell245

Yah, mostly that 30% is eaten up with staff meetings, phone calls, email and of course, filling out time reports! (I'm sure that Dilbert and User Friendly factor in there also, heh.) The interesting thing you find when you run these numbers on a large group of people, is that it doesn't really *matter* how long the work week is, it could be 50 hours, but for some reason it's hard to get more than 28 hours/week out of people. There are always exceptions, but that works both ways! <g> The ony time you can inflate this number is when you have your people working on jobs spanning several months, then at the end of the week they can say "Time spent on client A: 40 hours". If you have nothing but lots of big jobs you can approach 100% billable, likewise if you have nothing but a bunch of tiny jobs, billable hours can drop to 20-30%, even though it seems everyone is working hard. (The time inbetween jobs is pretty much constant.)

Your pal, -doc-

I knew what you meant , I was semi-joking about the screwing off. He gets WAY too close to 100% out of us.
It`s funny. this draws alot of parallels the the production carpentry trade, too. Of course the Boss expects 100%, but invariably neglects to facor the * moving to the next job* the * 120 mile round trip* time, as well as the other * put out the fire * situations that seem to crop up at the most inconvienient times. He seems to figure job-time as if 8hrs/day are productive, in an environment that changes by the hour.
But then , on his planet the day is 36 hours long and the week has 9 days.

That`s interesting , though, Doc. Does it work out the same if you keep track of actual focused time on a project ?


Cell245

[This message has been edited by docilebob (edited 06-01-2002).]

If you multiply 40 hours per week by 52 weeks (assuming paid vacation time) you get 2080 work hours in the year.

Exempting 2 weeks vacation time, you get 2000 working hours per year.

Yes, basic math is your forte!!! Go continue to bring mathematical inspiration to us all!