ROUGH ESTIMATION OF MANPOWER AT TENDER STAGE

Joel,



In Philippines building works, we are taught in college, for those taking civil engineering, that direct cost basically is composed of:



materials + labor



and the ratio of material cost is 70% for materials and 30% for labor.



So if you have a building activity with direct cost = 1000 PHP per unit, then, the material components is 700 per unit while the labor cost component is 300 PHP per unit.



Now to compute for the manhours knowing it will cost you this much, assume 2 laborer to do the job in one day @ 8 per day and assume the cost of labor is 150PHP per day per labor this will give you 300 PHP, the same as your budget for labor cost.



Now that you know that you need 2 labor to work for 8 hours per day, so that will give you 16 manhours per day per unit.



Now if the total unit is say 4,000 units, then, the total manhour will be 4,000 X 16 = 64,000 manhours per day and estimated duration will be 4,000 working days for 2 labors to work.



Next question 1: I want to shorten my working days to 60 working days, how many labors will I assign to work and compelete 4,000 units in 60 working days?



As an assignment, please get hold of CSI estimating handbook and derive the manhours using the basic philosophy as above. Take note that the money in CSI is in dollars so convert firts to pesos.



After you finish CSI, you can upgrade your skills by getting hold of Hudson. This time the money is in GBP.



Good luck and I hope you will find your answers.



Thank you,

Scarlett

can somebody lead me to the thread(s)that discussed this issue? appreciate your assistance...



regards,

Hi Joel



There is a rule of thumb for estimating resource hours from a cost plan and this has been discussed on several recent threads.



The skill is in knowing what percentage to use for the labour content in different types of construction.



I do not know of any published lists derived from audited research.



Best regards



Mike Testro

Is there is thumb rule in estimating number of Man-days based on Square Meter (area)? For example a 65,000 sqm built up area of a building,how many man-days does it require roughly?



The same with cost, Is there is thumb rule in estimating number of Man-days based on conceptual cost estimate? For example a conceptual estimate of xxxx$ for a building,how many man-days does it require roughly?



Regards,



Joel Estella

Hi Abdul



There have been earlier threads on this topic that you have not picked up.



Your labour resource must be linked back to your project cost.



You can extract the labour resource hours by applying a suitable labour % ratio to the cost.



To keep things simple use only one resource - Lab Hours - and apply this pro rata to all activities with a labour contrent.



If you are resource modelling then apply a reasonable gang size suitable for the work front or available manpower.



Best regards



Mike Testro