Build a more efficient workforce with this labour planning strategy

Labour planning is a pivotal cornerstone of workforce management. Your labour planning strategy is what guides each project towards success by assigning the right tasks to the right workers and anticipating your future labour needs.

An effective labour planning strategy ensures efficient resource usage and safeguards project budgets, timelines, and quality standards. We’ll delve into the nuances of labour planning, exploring its strategies, significance, and best practices.

Free eBook: Unveiling the Path to Digital Transformation in Construction

How to conduct proper labour planning

Proper labour planning is the backbone of successful construction projects. Follow these three techniques to effectively manage your workforce:

1. Strategy

A solid labour planning strategy goes further than headcounts—it involves a comprehensive understanding of the project’s scope, intricacies, and timelines. Creating a strategic plan starts with a detailed view of the project requirements and the skill sets of different workers.

• Assess the skills of your workforce. The first step in conducting proper labour planning is evaluating the skills and competencies of your workforce – their experience, certifications, specialised training, etc. 
  When you understand the limitations and strengths of each worker, you can make more informed decisions when assigning tasks that align with their expertise to ensure high-quality work and efficiency.
• Allocate tasks based on those skill sets. Once you have a detailed view of your worker’s skills, you can look at them alongside project requirements to determine who will work best where. Proper task allocation not only increases on-site productivity but also minimises errors, resulting in a smoother construction process.
• Align activities with timelines. The final aspect of creating a sound labour planning strategy is aligning your workforce availability with project timelines. With tight deadlines and schedules, you must ensure that the right number of workers with the right skill sets are available to achieve specific project milestones.
  This alignment requires careful scheduling and coordination to prevent delays and bottlenecks. You can use digital construction software to track worker availability and project timelines to facilitate seamless coordination between the two.

2. Dynamicity

Every construction project comes with some level of unpredictability. Whether it’s weather conditions, material shortages, or other unforeseen site challenges, they can disrupt your planned workflows in an instant.

Embracing dynamicity in your labour planning process allows you to develop strategies on the fly to adapt to any changes, ensuring your project stays on track.

• Adapt in real-time. You can’t have a dynamic labour plan without real-time adaptability. Construction management software allows you to monitor the progress of tasks and the availability of resources from anywhere at any time, allowing you to make adjustments immediately when necessary.
  For example, if a specific area of the project is delayed because of an unforeseen circumstance, you can quickly redeploy those workers to other activities where their skills are needed. This adaptability ensures the efficient use of resources and minimises downtime.
• Plan for challenges. Contingency plans are not optional if you want to set up your project for success. For labour planning, this means cross-training workers and having backup resources to take over tasks when an area of the project needs help from people with specific skills.
• Collaborate and communicate. Everyone from project managers to subcontractors needs to be in constant communication to share updates, problems, and solutions. Construction management software can help facilitate collaboration and communication with instant messaging, document sharing, and other labour planning tools.

3. Future planning

Planning for the future by analysing past performance and understanding industry trends to forecast future labour demands is a crucial part of the labour planning process. Taking a strategic approach to future planning allows contractors to prepare for upcoming projects and ensure they have the right workforce with the right skills at the right time.

• Analyse data and trends. You can leverage historical project data to identify patterns and trends to get a better view of peak seasons, common challenges, and where your workforce can improve. Using construction management software, you can create automatic reports to gain actionable insights and simplify the analytical process.
• Anticipate skill gaps. Looking for and analysing skill gaps in your workforce can help determine which areas need more training. Training programs can help upskill your workers and enhance their versatility, enabling them to handle a broad range of tasks and challenges effectively.
• Establish strategic partnerships. When thinking about future labour demands, establishing partnerships with subcontractors and vendors can make it easier to access skilled labour when you need it. These relationships can help scale your workforce up or down quickly while ensuring adaptability and flexibility.

What is the purpose of labour planning?

Labour planning is a systematic process of managing and organising your workforce to ensure the successful completion of each project. The main purposes of labour planning include:

• Efficient resource usage
• Cost management
• Adaptability and scalability
• On-time and on-budget project completion
• Preventing delays and reducing rework
• Higher quality workmanship
• Better adherence to safety protocols
• Strategic decision-making

Ultimately, proper labour planning helps ensure that you can meet project deadlines, adhere to budgets and maintain high quality standards – all of which result in satisfied clients from design to handover.

Labour planning best practices

From facilitating team collaboration to leveraging technology and developing contingency plans, these 5 labour planning best practices will help you achieve better project execution:

1. Consult with your team first

Achieving your labour planning goals starts with open and collaborative communication within your team. You can foster a culture of communication by:

• Holding regular meetings. Schedule frequent team meetings to discuss ongoing tasks, progress, and challenges. These meetings will provide a safe place for team members to express their opinions and offer solutions.
• Encouraging collaboration. Collaboration must happen between different roles and departments within your construction organisation. Cross-functional teams provide diverse perspectives and innovative problem-solving strategies.
• Asking for feedback. Establish procedures that allow workers to provide anonymous input and analyse that feedback to identify common complaints to find areas of improvement in your labour planning.

2. Use labour planning software

Implementing construction management software that includes labour planning tools is a proactive way to achieve better workforce management. You can make use of this software by:

• Choosing the right platform. Look for user-friendly software designed specifically for the construction industry. Determine which features are necessities and find a platform that checks all of the boxes – don’t forget to ensure integration with your current tools.
• Providing training and support. Even the best software is useless if no one takes advantage of its features. Provide your team with comprehensive training on how to use it effectively and provide ongoing support to address any challenges during implementation.
• Customise it to fit your needs. Most construction management software comes with some level of customisation. You’ll want to set up features like task prioritisation, workforce scheduling, and real-time notifications about what’s happening on your site.

What about a free personalised demo of our labour planning software solution?

3. Monitor data in real-time

Real-time data monitoring is key for making informed decisions on the fly. You can track and monitor your on- and off-site data more efficiently by:

• Taking advantage of live dashboards. The construction management software you use should provide live dashboards that allow you to see project data in real-time. They offer visual representations of key metrics and enable quick interpretation of that data.
• Creating alert systems. You’ll also want to set up automated alerts for project milestones, schedule deviations, resource shortages, etc. These notifications ensure that you know about any issues immediately as they pop up.
• Using labour planning tools. With access to in-depth data (both current and historical), you can use your labour planning software to analyse trends and gain valuable insights, allowing you to make quick adjustments to your labour planning strategy.

4. Keep your future needs in mind

Labour planning isn’t just about your present labour needs—it requires anticipating future demand with a forward-thinking approach. Keep your future needs in mind by:

• Conducting industry research. Allocate some of your time and resources to research industry trends. Stay on top of new construction methods, sustainable practices, etc. that might influence your labour needs on future projects.
• Developing your workforce’s skills. Invest in ongoing training and certification programs for your workforce. By analysing site progress and labour data, you can identify where your workers need to improve and what training methods will enhance their productivity.
• Building a solid network. Industry contacts and vendor partnerships are key to a construction company’s future success. Keep in touch with your network to stay updated on industry developments and easily access skilled labour when needed.

5. Leave yourself with some margin for error

You need to build a margin of error into your labour planning to allow for flexibility and adaptability. You can do this by:

• Developing contingency plans. You should have contingency plans for weather disruptions, unexpected site conditions, supply chain delays, etc. These plans should outline alternative approaches and resource allocations to reduce delays.
• Giving in to redundancy. Specifically, resource redundancy – you should maintain a pool of workers that you can deploy when you need on-site help immediately. Maintaining a standby workforce makes addressing sudden surges in workload seamless.
• Conducting regular reviews. Analyse your labour planning strategies to assess their effectiveness. Identify when your margin of error was beneficial and learn from past projects to refine your approach and adjust your future plans accordingly.

Schedule and track your employees with LetsBuild

Labour planning doesn’t have to be time-consuming and confusing – LetsBuild empowers contractors and project managers with real-time employee tracking, data-driven insights, intelligent scheduling, and seamless communication and collaboration.

With LetsBuild, you can monitor workforce activities, assign tasks more efficiently, ensure timely progress updates, and analyse productivity trends from anywhere. With our comprehensive approach, you can optimise your labour planning strategies, resulting in efficient project execution, reduced downtime, and better client satisfaction.
Book your personalised demo of LetsBuild to gain real-time visibility and full control of your labour planning with automated dashboards, progress reporting, scheduling tools, and more.